BY ESTELLE DEBATES
MORGANTOWN, West Virginia - On March 20 the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to ban the "intact dilation and evacuation" abortion procedure sometimes used in late-term abortions. The Senate is expected to pass the bill later this month. Supporters of women's rights need to mobilize against this latest attempt by Congress to further erode the right to choose abortion. But so far, there has been no effective response by the women's rights movement.

In fact, Naomi Wolf, a prominent feminist writer, put forward what amounts to a complete capitulation to the assault in an April 3 op-ed piece published by the New York Times entitled "Pro-Choice and Pro-Life."

Wolf says its time to give up the "euphemism" of demanding the right to abortion as "a woman's choice." We should stop speaking of the issue as "privacy" and "rights." Instead, "what if we called abortion what many believe it to be: a failure.... What if we called the policies that sustain, tolerate and even guarantee the highest abortion rate of any industrialized nation what they should be called: crimes against women?" she suggests.

Wolf calls for "common ground" between activists from both sides of the battle, challenging pro-choicers to "abandon a dogmatic approach" of defending "a women's choice" and challenges "pro-lifers to separate from the demagogues in their ranks and join us in the drive to prevent unwanted pregnancy." She envisions women's rights activists joining with the right to work on "ensuring better prenatal care; making adoption easier; reducing the rate of teen pregnancy," etc., and calls on the federal government to champion this "common ground" approach.

But the fight to defend abortion rights is simply the front line in defending women's rights in general and the gains of the working class as a whole. Giving ground on this will only embolden the ultraright, including those who have organized physical attacks on abortion rights activists and clinic personnel.

Abortion is a woman's right
The right to abortion, codified in the Jan. 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, was one of the biggest conquests of the women's liberation movement. This right was won by a movement that argued that a woman has a right to control her own body and her own life, to decide when and whether to have a child. On that basis, an effective struggle was waged that won a majority of people to support abortion rights.

But ever since that 1973 victory, there has been a bipartisan effort to overturn abortion rights, beginning with the passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976 that banned the use of federal funds for abortion. Since then more inroads have been made by local, state, and federal officials, including parental consent laws, 24-hour waiting periods, and forced "counseling." In recent years several states have passed "fetal rights" legislation. The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy said there have been nearly 200 cases in which women have been prosecuted for endangering the "lives" of fetuses under such laws.

These moves by the government and the resulting erosion of abortion rights have emboldened rightist forces to take aggressive action in the streets. This process has been accelerated in the 1990s by the deepening assault by the employers and their government on workers' rights in response to the growing economic crisis of capitalism.

In the summer of 1991, rightist forces carried out a successful offensive, shutting down an abortion clinic for nearly seven weeks in Wichita, Kansas. In the spring of that year, members of the Wichita City Council, backed by the mayor, proposed a new city ordinance that would have severely restricted abortion rights and made it policy of the city that life begins at conception. In July the ordinance was defeated in a 4 to 3 vote.

The next week Operation Rescue, a right-wing antiabortion outfit, announced a "Summer of Mercy" campaign to close down abortion clinics in the city. The initial response of national women's rights organizations was to urge that there be no public effort to counter the assaults, but to instead rely on the cops and the courts to enforce the law of the land.

With the full support of the mayor, the governor of Kansas, and the cops - and with no resistance in sight - thousands of rightists descended on Wichita. They succeeded in showing their strength and capacity to mobilize and win government support. With their success in Kansas, leaders of the organization announced they would take back abortion rights city by city, and launched a campaign to do so.

In an article published in the Militant at the time, I noted, "In their aggressive street mobilizations, the rightists in Wichita showed a face of incipient American fascism." While Operation Rescue is not itself a fascist organization, the coming years of economic crisis and class polarization will engender fascist movements. "These forces will pose `radical' solutions to the crises of the day and use the streets to try to shift the relationship of forces against, and deal blows to, the workers' movement and others who seek to resist the employers' offensive. They will act not solely against abortion rights but against broader democratic rights that aid workers in their struggles," I wrote in 1991. This remains the case today.

Mobilizations push back clinic attacks
Operation Rescue never again scored another Wichita, as thousands of people -many of them young - turned out in city after city to defend the clinics against the right-wing assault. From Buffalo, New York, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the rightists were outmobilized in disciplined counter- demonstrations and defeated over the following year. Abortion rights supporters relied on and organized themselves to push back the right-wing offensive. A half- million people marched in Washington, D.C., in April 1992, the largest abortion rights action ever in the United States.

Under the pressure of this public defense of abortion rights, the cops and courts began arresting and sentencing those responsible for the attacks. The numbers of those willing to join in the assaults began to quickly dwindle.

Coming out of this defeat, elements within the right wing turned to acts of desperation to continue the assault. In 1993 Dr. David Gunn was murdered outside a clinic in Pensacola, Florida. In 1994 clinic escort James Barrett and Dr. John Bayard Britton were shot to death at another Pensacola clinic. The murder of two receptionists and the injury of five others at abortion clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts, on Dec. 30, 1995, prompted new mobilizations demanding an end to clinic violence and in defense of abortion rights.

The consistent mobilizations of defenders of women's rights pushed the right-wing thugs into retreat, but the fact is, such mobilizations have been few and far between in recent years. Attempts by Congress to ban an abortion procedure, and commentaries like Wolf's, will only serve to embolden rightist assaults to re-emerge once again.

While Wolf may be ready to throw in the towel on abortion rights, the mobilizations in city after city in recent years show that tens of thousands of ordinary working people and youth are not. And it is these forces that can be relied upon to act in defense of a woman's right to choose, including facing the right wing in the streets.

Now is the time for public actions, speak-outs, and teach- ins that present a clear defense of a woman's right to control her own body and make all decisions about it - including a late term abortion.  
 
 
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