BY JOANNE WALLADOR

TORONTO - In August, Justice Perry Schulman of the Manitoba Court committed a 22-year-old Native woman who was five months pregnant to a drug treatment program for the duration of her pregnancy. This action was sought by Winnipeg Child and Family Services, a government agency. This organization already has custody of the woman's three children, two of whom they claim were born brain-damaged due to the woman's addiction to inhaling solvents. In his written decision the judge said that Parliament should draft laws to delineate the role of the state in protecting the unborn. "This, of course, can mean some interference with the freedom of the mother," he wrote, "but, in my opinion, in appropriate circumstances that interference will be justified." The order by Justice Schulman was overturned in its entirety September 12 by Manitoba's Court of Appeal.

The big-business media welcomed Judge Schulman's decision. An editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail, entitled "To protect the not-yet-born," argued that "It is reasonable to say, then, that the abuse of a future child can be considered child abuse."

Ovide Mercredi, head of the Assembly of First Nations, called the ruling racist.

Fiona Miller, a member of the Feminist Alliance on New Reproductive and Genetic Technologies, wrote, "These legal interventions are wrong. This woman is not a criminal. This woman is not a fetal container."

The intervention of the state into this situation has nothing to do with concern for children or women. How hypocritical for the state to pose as a protector of children when capitalist governments across Canada are slashing welfare and child care, throwing thousands of children into poverty. How cynical to use so-called "fetal rights" to attack women's right to control their own bodies. Magazines and newspapers across Canada ran long articles in the wake of this decision, the general thrust of which was "rethinking abortion."

In 1988, after decades of struggle, all laws on abortion in Canada were struck down. Several attempts by Canada's capitalist rulers since that time to reestablish them have been defeated. This ruling is yet another attempt.

Women need the right to control their ability to have children in order to make gains toward equality. As long as women are vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies it will be difficult to break down economic and social barriers on the job, in education, and in the home.

The only rights involved in this case are those of the young Native woman to control her body, a right that all women are entitled to. While the fetus is a potential human life, until it is born it is part of the woman's body. There is no such thing as "fetal rights."

It is no accident that this probe by the ruling class, aimed at undermining support for women's right to control their own bodies, was tried on a Native woman. Since the forcible dispossession of their land by European colonizers, Native people in Canada have suffered racist oppression and exploitation.

Mercredi pointed out that in the past, children's aid societies had been quick to take Native children away from their families. "Are they going to start running after fetuses now?" he asked in a television interview. He was referring to the fact that from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s, an estimated 3,000 Native children from Manitoba were removed from their homes and adopted by families outside the province until protests by Native people forced the government to end the practice and repatriate those who wanted to come back.

With this judge's ruling, the government is proposing to increase its arbitrary powers to attack civil rights and use coercion against working people's behavior.

The labor movement should demand "Hands off this woman!" Workers need to continue fighting against the cutbacks in social services that we need, including voluntary drug treatment programs that respect the dignity of those who want to use them. The labor movement needs to fight for a shorter workweek with no cut in pay to create jobs for all. Unemployment among Native people stood at 24.6 percent as of the last census in 1991. We need to fight for affirmative action for victims of discrimination such as Native people and women. Labor should champion the demands of the oppressed, including the just settlement of Native land claims and women's right to control their bodies.

Working people are concerned about the situation of those who, driven by the alienation and hopelessness spawned by capitalist exploitation and oppression, are drawn to addictions and self-destructive behavior.

Only struggle around demands such as those above, that draw in hundreds of thousands of working people and that will pose the need for a different kind of society than the dog-eat-dog capitalist system we presently know, can build the human solidarity that can begin to overcome this alienation.  
 
 
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