Gains for women’s rights, including the decriminalization of abortion, codified in the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, were not the result of enlightened justices, congresspeople, or presidents. They were won through the mass struggles that marked the rise of the women’s liberation movement, itself a by-product of the civil rights movement and the movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam. The basis for these gains was the massive influx of women into the workforce in the decades after World War II, which gave women increased economic independence and confidence to fight for their rights.

The right to choose means the right of a woman to control her own body, an elementary precondition for ending the second-class status that women face in class society. Defending the right to choose, as well as all women’s rights, strengthens the ability of working people, men and women, to fight against exploitation and all forms of oppression that are perpetuated by the capitalist system of private profit for a few.

That is why the 1973 ruling in favor of the right to choose has been under sustained attack by successive Democratic and Republican administrations. At the same time, because of the deep-going social impact of the mass struggles by Blacks and women that led to the decriminalization of abortion, the U.S. rulers cannot simply take away those gains through the stroke of a pen. In fact, the composition of the U.S. Supreme Court has never been decisive to safeguarding this or any other right. Some of the most far-reaching rulings codifying gains for Black, women’s, and gay rights were signed by conservative appointees of Richard Nixon or other Republican presidents.

For the same reason, the main attacks on a woman’s right to choose have not centered on a direct attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade, and that is unlikely to take place under the Bush administration. The biggest blows have been the ongoing erosion of access to abortion under Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Working-class women are most affected.

It was Democratic president James Carter who in 1977 signed into the law the Hyde Amendment, which cut off Medicaid funding for abortions. The Clinton administration approved an extension of the Hyde Amendment to bar Medicare funding for abortions. Clinton delivered a further blow—especially to working-class women raising children on their own—with the 1996 “end welfare as we know it” law, which eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

As a result of these and other restrictions, under the Clinton presidency the number of U.S. counties with an abortion provider declined from 16 percent to 14 percent. And the ban on the medical procedure misnamed “partial-birth abortion” was a bipartisan measure. During the 2004 election, both Republican candidate George Bush and Democrat John Kerry supported restrictions on abortion such as parental notification.

Today, Hillary Clinton and other liberal Democrats are increasingly open in advocating restrictions on abortion—all in the name of positioning the Democrats to win future elections. Senator Clinton’s call for championing “religious and moral values,” “teenage celibacy,” “reducing the number of abortions to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies,” and seeking alliances with anti-abortion forces are all rationalizations for scapegoating working-class women and for further attacks on a woman’s right to choose. Supporting that line—subordinating the fight for women’s rights to backing Democratic “friends of women”—is what led the San Francisco chapter of the National Organization for Women to pull out of the January 22 pro-choice march.

Mobilizations like the one in San Francisco and the April 25, 2004, pro-choice march of a million in Washington, D.C., to counter the opponents of women’s equality are crucial in giving confidence to supporters of women’s rights and sending a message to the U.S. rulers that we won’t go back to the days of illegal back-alley abortions.
 
 
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San Francisco: 4,000 march to defend a woman’s right to choose  
 
 
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