Defend women’s right to choose!

The labor movement and all working people should join in the fight against the growing number of state laws restricting women’s access to abortion, and against the attacks on Planned Parenthood.

Defending the right to choose abortion is a working-class question: the right to decide when or if to bear children is fundamental to a woman’s control of her own life and to winning full social, economic and political equality, a prerequisite to uniting the working class. The attacks on the right to choose — from waiting periods to excessive regulations designed to force clinics to close to denial of Medicaid and insurance coverage for abortion — land hardest on working-class women and the rural poor.

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution registered the conquests of the Second American Revolution, which put an end to chattel slavery. It says, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The fight for abortion to be the decision of a woman — not the government, a doctor, a relative or anyone else — is part of the fight to extend this constitutional protection fully to women.

In the context of today’s capitalist depression and growing attacks on working people, the rulers’ efforts to relentlessly cut women’s access to abortion is part of a broader campaign against working-class women to undermine their confidence, drive down the value of their labor power and divide the working class.

Women and the working class are paying a big price today for the refusal of the established women’s rights organizations to mobilize spirited public actions in support of women’s right to abortion, and campaign vigorously for it as a fundamental question of women’s equality. Like most liberals today, they believe workers are moving to the right, evidenced by the support for Donald Trump. They argue supporters of abortion should focus on “stopping the right” and not to rock the boat. Trust in the courts, they say, and work to elect “pro-choice” politicians.

The Socialist Workers Party points to the young people who mobilized in Chicago Jan. 17 against restrictions on women’s right to choose abortion as a good example that can and should be emulated.

Related articles:
Protest hits restrictions on abortion rights, cuts to Planned Parenthood

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