No Return to Back-Alley Abortions! Mass Actions Can Defend Womens’ Rights! Electing “Two Party” Pols Never Have or Will!
How is it possible that womens’ rights can be dialed back? How come our expectations of personal agency are being dashed by the very court that is supposed to protect democratic rights? The individualist feminist consciousness that was popularized post-Roe did not come to grips with rightism’s big money, roots in English law or the staying power of reactionary religious indoctrination. Working mothers facing the Alito nightmare now are forced to ask: where are the organizations that have a program and method to secure women’s liberation? The implications of the leak are stark for all rights not enumerated in the Constitution or of long standing in our cultural history, beginning with every aspect of privacy. But our electeds insist this is alarmism.
The trade union leadership and 501k women’s liberation movement organizations that are really only Democrat party front organizations (think “Emily’s List,” CLUW, NOW etc.) as well as parallel ostensibly independent specially oppressed peoples groups, none of these ever had even a pretense to a mission to overturn patriarchy, gender and class oppression. The Terminal Crisis of Capitalism, the Capitalocene accelerates patriarchy’s war against women’s agency as it accelerates capital’s war against the working class and nature. The falling rate of profit perpetuates a state of economic crisis, where ideologies of patriarchal control and resurgent fascism serve the ruling class by channeling the class hatred of flailing layers of the petty bourgeoisie away from the capitalist class and onto the specially oppressed peoples, women and the organizations of the working class. Reaction can be defeated, but those leaders who won’t fight it must be replaced by revolutionaries determined to finish reaction’s grip off!
Capitalist production depends upon the legacy and structures of the patriarchy to control women’s lives, bodies and reproductive rights. Exploiting unpaid domestic labor to reproduce and sustain the laboring classes, patriarchy, in neo-liberal and business terms, like rationalizing Human Resources departments, outsourced the expense of social reproduction from capital onto working class women and their families.
Yet, rather than developing a class program and building working class womens’ action organizations to defeat capitalism and patriarchy, today’s leaders only offer reforms, hedged on electoral bets, placed in the casino of class collaboration. The masses in the streets created such pressure that limited abortion rights were recognized by SCOTUS. The reform was accomplished without overthrowing capitalism. We were told (!!!) the socialist contention that women’s liberation could only be secured by socialist revolution was proved wrong. Then the Equal Rights Amendment failed to pass in 1975– and we were told the masses could be demobilized and still build their movement with community-based organizations (CBO’s) and endless mailers. Thus we wind up with the Alito leak and the spin that nothing can really be done until November. In fact the Democrats cannot win the 60 seats (62, taking account of their unreliables) they need in the Senate. But all our “respectable” leaders offer us nothing different.
Rejecting working womens’ class independence the ‘movement’ slid that slippery slope along the electoral path from social democratic reformist Bella Abzug and civil rights activist Shirley Chisholm type feminist icons to post-modern woke neo-liberal corporatist-imperialist feminism (Clinton, Harris, Feinstein, Pelosi); the movement opened the door, which, and in the name of ‘breaking the glass ceiling’ the patriarchy squeezed in its (gender/sex traitors) enforcers who demobilized the masses, stringing them along with illusions in the capitalist state, its class nature and its reformability.
The decades-long undermining and attacks on a woman’s right to have an abortion are coming to a head with the leak of the SCOTUS majority draft opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade. If this decision becomes the official position of the Court, Roe would be overturned on the Federal level, and state anti-abortion “trigger” laws already on the books would take effect and the anti-woman, anti-abortion bigots would find the wind in their sails. The Louisiana State Legislature had a bill introduced that would classify abortion as homicide, while GOP Senators like Joni Ernst are preparing to introduce Federal legislation that would nationally ban abortions after 6 weeks. Many women do not even know they are pregnant until six weeks or after. And conservatives are pushing to end all restrictions (rape, incest, fetal viability, health of the mother) in many states, along with proposals to restrict or ban birth control.
While many of the more egregious bills on the state level have been struck down by the courts, the leaked SCOTUS draft demonstrates the qualitative acquiescence of officeholders on the public’s payroll to the religious right. The 2021 Texas Heartbeat Act, that enlists private citizens to sue abortion providers, has been challenged and upheld by the courts as law up to this point. If SCOTUS overturns Roe it will unleash a wave of social reaction against women’s reproductive rights at the state level along with the Federal level. Even with Roe in place, the state laws that place restrictions on abortion along with a lack of access to abortion providers makes a woman’s right to abortion a farce in many localities.
Rights gained under Roe have been under attack since day one. The rights were proclaimed, but for many they were never secured. Abortion, always a “Choice” for ruling class women, has never been an easy “Choice” for poor, migrant, Black, Brown or working class women, who lack the money, access, time and resources. Should this leak become law of the land, Black, Brown and poor communities will take a severe economic beating in both hardships and in female employment! Less obvious is the destruction of family viability and the return to back alley abortions. Only just invisible is the destruction of trade and career plans of females, with the psychological damage visited on their kids. The “Family and Medical Leave Act” affords job protection to those who can travel to get an abortion overseas. Democratic reproductive rights which contradict the needs of capital accumulation can never be secure under the regime of capital. Any reform under capitalism that is granted can be taken away. That’s their plan.
Elections, the Democrats and the Courts are a Dead-end
In this age of postmodern bourgeois ideology based in identity politics which puts the self-determination of the individual before the collective class and gender interests of workers and women, the class and gender origins of women’s oppression and exploitation must be identified and asserted for working class women to reclaim power in their own liberation. Women’s liberation through socialist revolution will destroy the materialist basis for postmodern ideology–reformist inclusionism–which accepts and justifies class and special oppression when conducted on behalf of the ruling class by ‘woke’ politicians who raise identity over class and get over with spin and confusion.
As with most every struggle in the US, there are vast illusions that elections and the Democratic Party are the means of winning. Abortion rights were won in 1973 due to the struggles that preceded the Supreme Court decision. The women’s liberation movement was inspired by the Civil Rights and the anti-war movements of the 1960’s. It is only through mass struggle in the streets and workplaces that the current attacks can be stopped.
For mass, labor union-centered mobilizations to defend abortion clinics!
No restrictions on abortion rights! For free abortion on demand! For free Plan B and contraception and medical support! No parental or spousal consent required! No forced sterilization!
Free quality healthcare for all! Universal access to clinics, hospitals and medications. Nationalization of Big Pharma, for-profit hospital chains, medical clinics, and the medical insurance industry. No indemnification of the big shareholders and all run under workers/community control!
Protect women’s spaces such as women’s sports, women’s lockers and toilet facilities.
Defend LGBTQI+ persons against violence and government repression! No more PULSE massacres!
Free 24-hour domestic violence refuges!
For free quality housing for all!
Living wages for domestic work and free community laundry, grocery delivery and restaurants.
Jobs for all! 25 hours work for 40 hours pay! For a 100% Cost of Living Allowance indexed to inflation! Pass the ERA! Equal pay for equal work!
For free 24-hour childcare! For employer-paid family leave that ensures sufficient bonding and care time for both parents and children and guaranteed income and right of return to the job!
For a workers government and workers self defense to enforce this program.
Build a revolutionary workers party, a section of a new revolutionary workers International to win world socialism and the liberation of women.
For women’s liberation through world socialist revolution!
Communist Workers Group (USA), 05/10/2022
