Vol. 73/No. 34      September 7, 2009

We join together with working people, youth, and others mobilized in Bellevue, Nebraska, to defend a woman’s right to choose abortion. We salute our fellow fighters for women’s rights and urge all to continue to mobilize for this struggle.

The August 28-29 action to defend Dr. LeRoy Carhart’s clinic is a crucial response needed to counter the attacks from opponents of women’s rights. As the crisis of capitalism worldwide grows, polarization around issues such as women’s rights, and in particular their right to control their own bodies, become sharper. The recent killing of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and other attempts by opponents of women’s rights to clamp down on legal abortion illustrate the need to rebuild a movement to defend and extend abortion rights.

At best, capitalist politicians in the Democratic and Republican parties have simply let the killing of Doctor Tiller and other rightist attacks pass with little or no objection. President Barack Obama issued a two-sentence statement in response to the killing, calling abortion “a difficult issue.” Just two weeks earlier, Obama called for finding “common ground” with antiabortion groups. “Let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortion,” he said. These statements only serve to embolden rightist forces.

So-called “friends of women” in the capitalist political parties offer no way out of the systematic oppression of women produced by capitalism.

The course of reliance on capitalist politicians, Democrats and Republicans, has weakened the defense of the right to abortion and disoriented women’s rights fighters. As of 2005 some 87 percent of U.S. counties—and 97 percent of non-metropolitan counties—had no abortion provider. Thirty-five states now require parental consent or notification for minors seeking an abortion, while 24 states require waiting periods. In most states, Medicaid programs do not cover abortions, which in 2008 cost an average of $523.

These inroads that opponents of abortion rights have made underscore the need to redouble our efforts to make sure women can exercise their right to choose whether and when to bear children. Having the right to decide this question is a precondition for full equality and liberation. Without the right to control her own body, a woman cannot exercise effective control over her life or join as an equal in the social and political arenas, such as the fight for job and education equality and for union rights.

One of the major factors in the 1973 victory of Roe v. Wade was the rise of an uncompromising movement for women’s liberation, which built upon the momentum of the fight for Black rights and against the Vietnam war. It was marked by the refusal to subordinate the fight for legalized abortion to the electoral aspirations of capitalist politicians.

As long as the capitalist system exists, capitalist social relations will maintain the subordinate status of women in society in order to increase profits and divide and weaken the working class. The only way to open the road to ending women’s oppression is to take power out of the hands of the handful of billionaire families who run this country and reorganize society in the interests of the exploited majority, with working people in command.

Along the working class’s line of march toward political power, the Socialist Workers candidates put forward the following immediate demands to unite working people and strengthen our fighting capacity: Defend and extend affirmative action for women and oppressed nationalities! Keep abortion safe and legal!
 
 
Related articles:
Abortion rights activists mobilize to defend clinic
Nebraska action responds to rightists’ threat
How right to choose abortion was won
Lessons from 1970s point to importance of mobilizing to defend it today
N.Y. socialist calls for legalization of immigrants
Iowa socialists file petitions for ballot status
Socialists answer Seattle paper on disclosure laws  
 
 
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