The January 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion was a landmark victory in the struggle for women’s liberation.

It was the first major advance recorded by the new wave of struggles by women in the fight against the institutionalized domestic slavery to which women have been relegated by class society.

The abortion rights victory opened the door for millions of women--especially working women, Blacks, Chicanas, Puerto Ricans--to begin to control their own reproductive functions, their own bodies. It went a significant way towards establishing a fundamental human right for all women--the right to choose whether or not to bear a child.

Freedom from enforced motherhood is a precondition to women’s liberation. Only with the right to control their own bodies can women begin to reassert their full human identity as productive, not only reproductive, beings.

The 1973 abortion rights decision sets the stage for a new level of women’s liberation struggles. Such struggles will be inspired by the victory won and enhanced by the heightened social expectations and confidence of women developed because of the decision and the changes it will bring.

The victory can only serve to hasten the development of a proletarian vanguard of fighting women and men capable of achieving women’s liberation and leading the American socialist revolution to victory....  
 
Behind the Supreme Court victory
The Supreme Court decision was brought about by a combination of factors. Some of them are cited in the 1971 SWP resolution, "Towards a Mass Feminist Movement," as factors responsible for the emergence of the women’s liberation struggle as a whole.

First, the decision was a product of the increasing disparity between the actual position of women and the possibilities provided by today’s technology and wealth for freeing women from a narrow existence of domestic drudgery. As a result of psychological conditioning and economic coercion women continue to be channeled into the role of wife-mother-housekeeper. They are systematically molded for this socially prescribed role by law, by custom, by religion, by the dominant ideology of the ruling class. They are taught it is their "natural" place. While women today have more options than ever before in terms of jobs, education, and participation in productive activity, they are still restricted at every turn by the institutionalized forms of sexual discrimination and oppression which are the basic underpinnings of class society.

This disparity between what is and what could be became abundantly clear in the debate around the issue of abortion. The use of birth control devices and the pill are now widespread in the U.S., and are recognized as a legal right in most states. Under modern medical practice abortions are safer by far than childbirth. But for simply exercising the right to control their own bodies, women have been branded as criminals and condemned to risk their lives at the hands of back street abortionists.

This and similar contradictions gave rise to the women’s liberation movement in general and the struggle against the reactionary abortion laws in particular.

The impact of women’s liberation ideas and the fight carried out by large numbers of women was another major factor behind the Supreme Court decision. This was manifested in the fact that the concept put forward by large numbers of women’s liberation forces--that abortion should be a woman’s right to choose--was incorporated in the Supreme Court decision.

The ruling was also influenced by the general radicalization with its challenges to traditional attitudes and values. The rise of the Black movement, the antiwar movement and other struggles for social change helped create an atmosphere that spurred changing views on abortion.

The influence of the radicalization, and the development of the feminist movement in particular, was reflected in the polls that showed a rapid change in attitudes relating to abortion between 1968 and 1971. In 1968, the polls reported that only 15 percent of the population believed women had a right to abortion. Abortion was still largely a secret ordeal that many women went through but were afraid to talk about. By 1969, the percentage supporting abortion rose dramatically to 40 percent. By 1971, it was 50 percent.

The rise of the women’s liberation movement helped bring about the first partial victory in the abortion rights struggle: the legalization of abortion in New York state in 1970. The excellent safety record in New York under the new law and the demonstrated demand for legal abortion helped legitimize the procedure and also made it more difficult for the ruling class to take back this limited gain women had won....  
 
Upsurge of abortion rights struggle
The turning point came with a number of startling successes registered by the anti-abortion forces including a right-to-life demonstration of 10,000 in New York, the defeat of pro-abortion referendums in Michigan and North Dakota and the near defeat of the New York law in the state legislature. These setbacks in the spring and summer of 1972, and the clear danger that the New York law would be lost during the upcoming session of the New York legislature, helped convince large numbers of women of the urgent need to unite and take action to defend the gains already won and to extend them further.

As a result, WONAAC [Women’s National Abortion Action Coalition] meetings and activities began to win new and broader support. The local tribunals, held in the fall of 1972, were successful in involving sectors of the women’s movement and the traditional abortion rights organizations which had refused to work with WONAAC in the past.

WONAAC began to regroup broader forces that had the potential for organizing sizable actions. Three hundred people, including prominent supporters of abortion in the New York Assembly and representatives from various abortion groups, participated in a WONAAC-sponsored meeting in early December which mapped out plans to defend the New York law. Groups such as Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Women’s Political Caucus and the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws began to join with WONAAC to build specific actions. An extremely broad list of endorsements was obtained for the planned Abortion Tribunal.

WONAAC also began to work with some significant union forces, including individual union leaders of the hospital workers (Local 1199), the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the Furrier, Leather and Machine Workers Union, the Cleaners and Dyers Joint Board, the Social Service Employees Union and others....

The dramatic upsurge of the abortion rights struggle internationally--involving demonstrations of up to 10,000 in both France and Belgium--indicates that the abortion issue does indeed have the potential, as we consistently and correctly emphasized, to provoke significant struggle for this basic need of women. It was precisely this potential that the ruling class was attempting to defuse through the concession it made with the high court ruling.
 
 
Related articles:
Washington rally marks Roe v. Wade, defends right to abortion
Defend right to choose abortion  
 
 
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