The U.S. Supreme Court, in Roe v. Wade, ruled that women had the constitutional right to have abortions. The ruling legalized abortion through the first twenty-four weeks of pregnancy and struck down all laws that restricted that right.

For the first time the right of women to decide whether or not to bear children—not the state, church, husband, father, or priest—was recognized.

The women’s liberation movement saw reproductive freedom as the most fundamental right of women, a precondition for full equality and liberation. Without the right to control her own body, a woman could not exercise effective control over her life.

Beginning in the 1960s, contraception was becoming more available and accepted, but it was not foolproof—and still isn’t. Advances in medical science had made abortion a safe, simple, medical procedure. But in most states, abortion was against the law. Women were forced to bear children against their will, or risk dangerous—and often deadly—illegal or self-induced abortions. In 1969, the year before New York State adopted liberalized abortion laws—a step that laid the basis for the later Supreme Court victory—approximately 210,000 women entered city hospitals due to abortion complications.

The restrictions on abortion were powerful and barbaric chains on women. Black women and Latinas suffered the most from the illegal status of abortion. Eighty percent of the hundreds of women who died each year were Black and Spanish-speaking women. And many Black women and Latinas were forced to submit to sterilization in order to obtain an abortion.

Prior to the emergence of the feminist movement in the late 1960s, many supporters of legal abortion presented their arguments in terms of population control—arguments that are used to bolster the racist practice of forced sterilization.

The feminist movement put the axis for the fight to legalize abortion where it belonged—on the right of women to control their own bodies. It was on this basis that majority support for legal abortion was won.

Because of the stakes involved in the fight for abortion rights, this right was never secure.

Several years ago, Democrats and Republicans alike began to step up their attacks on the right to abortion.

The Hyde Amendment, passed by Congress in 1976, was the most serious blow. It cut off Medicaid funding for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or when a woman’s life is in danger. In May 1981, Congress cut off funds even in cases of rape and incest.

In October 1984, Congress once again denied abortion funding for victims of rape and incest….  
 
The 1984 elections
The 1984 presidential elections were used as a staging ground for a major escalation in the ideological offensive against women’s rights. The main theme sounded was, “Abortion is murder!”

The Catholic archbishops pressed to make abortion the “key issue” in the elections. Fundamentalist Protestant preachers like “Moral Majority” leader Jerry Falwell stepped up their antiabortion propaganda.

Reagan and the Republican Party convention openly endorsed legislation that would “make clear that the 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn children.”

Prominent liberal Democrats like Geraldine Ferraro responded by agreeing that abortion is murder, but that as long as a majority supports abortion rights, it shouldn’t be made illegal.

“I do not believe in abortion,” Ferraro emphatically told the press. “I am opposed to abortion as a Catholic . . . but I will not impose my religious views on others.”

The question, however, is not separation of church and state. The question is a woman’s right to abortion.

Throughout the campaign, Ferraro stressed her abhorrence of abortion, helping to strengthen the reactionary “abortion is murder” campaign against women.

Week after week, abortion is discussed in the big-business media as a moral, religious, ethical, and scientific question; a private, public, personal, and medical question. But the real issue is the right of women to decide if and when to have children.

The torrent of antiabortion propaganda does not come out of a big victory by the capitalist rulers against women’s rights. Rather it is aimed at launching a fight to reverse the gains women have won in the last 15 years. The steps taken toward equality by both the women’s rights movement and the civil rights movement have strengthened the entire working class in its ability to struggle against the employers….

The ruling class ideological offensive is aimed at undermining the powerful idea that women should have equal rights. It is aimed at convincing both men and women that a woman’s place is in the home, and that the family, not the government, should bear the cost of caring for children, the sick, and the elderly.

It is aimed at justifying lower pay for women who work and making unemployment of women more acceptable.

The fire is aimed particularly at abortion rights because the right of women to choose whether or not to bear children is an elementary precondition for women’s liberation.

Leading the pack of the opponents of abortion rights has been New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor.  
 
Whose human rights?
In a major speech delivered on October 15, 1984, entitled “Human Lives, Human Rights,” O’Connor laid out many of the arguments in the antiabortion, anti-women’s rights arsenal. These arguments need to be rebutted—forcefully and publicly—by supporters of women’s rights.

The theme of O’Connor’s speech was the argument that abortion is a social evil and that fighting against abortion rights is progressive—like fighting against racism or for the rights of the elderly….

By linking abortion to genuine social wrongs and injustices, O’Connor tries to make his reactionary campaign against women’s rights more acceptable to the millions of working people who, in their majority, support legal abortion. He tries to paint it up as a new “civil rights” movement.

But abortion is not an injustice—it is a basic human right. The right of women to control their own bodies—which is what is at stake in the fight over legal abortion—is an elementary precondition for the liberation of women from the oppression they suffer as a sex.

It is the women’s liberation movement, which championed the fight for abortion rights, that is kindred to the fight for civil rights and against Washington’s war.

Women’s liberation and civil rights fighters stand together against inequality, discrimination, and exploitation. Both immeasurably strengthen the capacity of the labor movement to resist the current employer-class offensive.

O’Connor bases his arguments on the charge that abortion is murder and that women who have abortions are, therefore, guilty of murdering children.

Abortion is not murder. It is a simple medical procedure that terminates a pregnancy. Abortion is key to allowing women to decide whether and when to bear children.

One of the hierarchy’s favorite arguments is to liken what O’Connor calls the “murder” of “one and a half million unborn human lives . . . every year” to Hitler’s Holocaust—the Nazi policy of mass murder of Jews and others. He does not mention that as part of the Nazis’ degradation of human life, they outlawed abortion and contraception, reducing women to the status of breeders whose role was bearing children, and whose only place was in the kitchen and in church.

By saying the issue is the “rights” of the unborn, O’Connor and Company try to sucker people into a pointless, hairsplitting argument about the exact moment when human life begins. This is a total diversion from the real issue: the right of women to control their own bodies.

O’Connor’s pose as a champion of “human lives, human rights” does not include a concern for the lives and rights of women.

With a wave of the hand, he dismisses as untrue the “impression” that “masses” of women would die if abortion were to be made illegal again.

“We are informed,” he blithely asserts, “that this is not supported by figures issued by the United States government.”

This is a lie. Official statistics show that during the 1960s, when abortion was illegal, thousands of women were maimed and hundreds died each year as a result of botched abortions. We have no way of knowing how many other abortion mortalities were reported as deaths due to “severe hemorrhaging” or “miscarriage.”

In fact, it was outrage at the killings and maimings resulting from illegal abortion that helped spur women to demand an end to antiabortion laws. Legal abortions save lives—women’s lives.  
 
Denigration of value of women’s lives
O’Connor’s denigration of the value of women’s lives comes through clearly when he discusses why a woman should be forced to bear a child, no matter what the circumstances under which she becomes pregnant. “Certainly rape,” he concedes, “is always a frightening possibility.” But, he asks, “Is it at least possible that bearing a child, however conceived . . . might bring, even out of the tragedy of rape, a rich fulfillment?”

Forcing a woman to bear a child against her will is a brutal denial of a woman’s humanity and dignity. Bearing a child affects all the other aspects and decisions of a woman’s life—her ability to get an education, get a better job—or any job. As long as women are vulnerable to unwanted pregnancies, breaking down economic and social barriers on the job, in education, and in the home becomes a much more difficult task.

Of course, legalized abortion cannot solve all the problems facing women. But the right to choose is the most fundamental step toward women being able to achieve full equality.

That’s why after women began pouring into the work force in the last three decades, the question of legalizing abortion became a burning issue for millions. When women can control their childbearing functions, it allows them to begin to participate more fully in all aspects of social life. The right to choose means qualitatively more freedom and mobility for women.  
 
 
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