{"id":13274,"date":"2019-10-10T15:11:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T15:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/?p=13274"},"modified":"2019-10-10T15:11:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T15:11:13","slug":"womens-oppression-abortion-rights-are-in-danger-for-a-socialist-strategy-to-defend-womens-reproductive-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/litci.org\/en\/womens-oppression-abortion-rights-are-in-danger-for-a-socialist-strategy-to-defend-womens-reproductive-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Women’s Oppression Abortion Rights Are in Danger: For a Socialist Strategy to Defend Women\u2019s Reproductive Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the gains of the \u201c#Me Too\u201d movement, and the impressive Women\u2019s March demonstrations in 2017 and 2018, a new assault on women\u2019s reproductive rights\u00a0 is very much on its way. As I discuss in this article, religious conservative groups and the Republican Party have devised a tricky legal strategy to overturn Roe V. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that guarantees women\u2019s access to abortion.<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Florence Oppen, Workers\u2019 Voice \/ La Voz<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, in many states women\u2019s reproductive rights have already been vastly eroded by the religious right and state legislatures. While\u00a0 candidates running in the Democratic Party primaries have attempted to channel this issue into an\u00a0 electoral strategy, the history of the women\u2019s movement in the US and the recent mobilization of women and popular sectors in Latin America for women\u2019s rights have shown that only an insurrection from below, led by working class women and women of color, can stop and reverse the ongoing regression. We need to follow the lead of our sisters in Argentina, Spain, Brazil, Chile, and Poland and bring this new wave of women\u2019s rights and feminist struggles to the United States. We need to organize a massive mobilization in the streets and our workplaces, and build our own class power to uphold women\u2019s and LGBTQ rights.<\/p>\n

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An Historic Set-Back is Brewing<\/h2>\n

The Trump administration has amplified and enabled the ongoing assault on women\u2019s reproductive rights. On the one hand, he\u00a0 has nominated two conservative judges to the Supreme Court (Kavanaugh and Gorsuch) which has enabled the ongoing attempt to overthrow Roe v. Wade. On the other hand he is trying to implement a new policy that will deny federal funding to any healthcare provider that even mentions or redirect pregnant women to an abortion provider (the Hyde Amendment already prohibits to use federal money to fund most abortion procedures). Trump\u2019s new policy would affect the federal Title X family program which provides a range of reproductive health services to\u00a0 four million people each year, and would violate the ACA, which requires giving patients a full range of options.[1]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Even though this measure is unlikely to pass at this time, it is still another step backward in the federal support for women\u2019s reproductive healthcare.<\/p>\n

The greatest danger for women\u2019s abortion rights today is the legal strategy that the Christian Evangelical right and the Republican Party have devised. According to the Guttmacher Institute that monitors legislation on women\u2019s reproductive rights, \u201cstate legislatures across the South, Midwest and the Plains enacted 58 abortion restrictions, 26 of which would ban all, most or some abortions.<\/em>\u201d[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0This in itself is not an innovation:\u00a0 state abortion bans have been on the rise in half of the country since 2001. Over the last two decades, the right has adopted \u201cincremental abortion restrictions with the cumulative impact of denying care to patients and forcing clinics to close<\/em>.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0And they have been successful because today 53 percent\u00a0 of women live in a county where there is no\u00a0 abortion clinic, making\u00a0 the right to abortion to a mere abstraction for these women.<\/p>\n

The current assault is the next step of this reactionary strategy: the filing of abortion bans that directly challenge Roe v. Wade with the aim to eventually overthrow it in the Supreme Court. Recent anti-abortion bills in Alabama and Georgia made national headlines because of their new degree of harshness. In Alabama we are looking at a nearly\u00a0 all-out ban on abortion that will criminalize doctors who perform abortions with penalties of up to 99 years in prison. Meanwhile, Georgia is attempting to\u00a0 ban\u00a0 abortion after six\u00a0 weeks of pregnancy.[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

This is, however, just the tip of the iceberg of a larger strategy. According to the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, \u201cin the pipeline are at least 20 lawsuits, in various stages of judicial review, that have the potential to be decided in ways that could significantly change the rights laid out in the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.<\/em>\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

Currently the Supreme Court is set to review two abortion bills involving an Indiana measure signed into law three years ago, and more cases are yet to come. These laws against women\u2019s reproductive healthcare has a twisted strategy: filing aggressive anti-abortion state bills knowing they will be overturned by lower courts because they go against Roe v Wade, with the larger aim of initiating a series of appeals that would eventually reach the Supreme Court with its reactionary majority\u2026 State Rep. Terri Collins (R-Alabama) stated this goal openly:\u00a0 \u201cthe entire bill was designed to overturn [Roe v. Wade] and allow states to decide what is best for them<\/em>.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

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Abortion on Demand to a Tiny Minority: The Gains and Limits of Roe v. Wade<\/h2>\n

Roe v. Wade was a huge step forward, and it was the result of mass mobilization. Yet, the fact that women gained the right to abortion through a legal ruling and not through a law voted in Congress has also framed its fate and shaped its limitations. Indeed, the second key ruling on abortion\u00a0Planned Parenthood v. Casey<\/em>\u00a0in 1992, argued that states could place restrictions on abortion as long as they\u00a0 do not create an \u201cundue burden\u201d on a woman\u2019s right to abortion, and the queston of \u201cundue burden\u201d became another question of interpretation. This new ruling weakened the practical meaning of Roe v. Wade and opened the way for more than a thousand bans and restrictions filed at the state level since then.<\/p>\n

Since the late 90s, abortion rights on paper have corresponded to very different realities. As a result of the right\u2019s war of attrition since then:<\/p>\n