Reproductive Rights

Speech given at the Women's Equality Conference

To bear or not bear children - to control one's own fertility, one's physical self - is a basic and profoundly important human right. 40 percent of the world's three billion or so women live in countries that to one degree or another usurp that control or deny that right. And of course in our own country, a sharp struggle is raging over that right.

Defending women's right to bodily autonomy, women's right to self-determination - is a basic principle for those who are fighting for a democratic society, for a better world, a humane world.

Illegal abortions claim tens of thousands of lives annually, across the globe. Hundreds of thousands of women experience permanent injury, including sterility. I couldn't find the statistics for our country before Roe v. Wade, but deaths and injuries certainly numbered in the thousands.

So, we are not overstating when we say that this fight for the right to abortion is a matter of life and death. And although we place abortion rights in the broader context of reproductive rights, this is a special attack, and requires special attention.

The struggle to keep abortion "safe and legal," has taken on new importance under this ultra-right president, who, according to Monday's NY Times, sends a representative of his administration every Wednesday morning to meet with 100 "conservative" organizations, most -- if not all -- of which are part of the powerful and well-funded anti-abortion lobby.

On its first day in office, the Bush administration blocked funds to international family planning programs, in one quick act sentencing many women around the globe to illness, injury and death. (The anti-choice forces have been emboldened by this president, and already there are signs of a new offensive, including the idea of cutting federal employees' benefits to remove abortion and birth control.)

And, of course the looming danger of additional right-wing Supreme Court justices has the women's movement up in arms -- hence the April 22 March for Women's' Lives -- more about that in a moment.

Just a bit of background on the status of abortion rights and reproductive rights generally, or what has happened since the 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision: Almost immediately, efforts to restrict abortion began, starting with cutting off Medicare funding for abortion, (the 1977 Hyde amendment). Only 13 states have since passed laws that replace those federal funds.

On the state level, abortion rights have been under sustained attack, with many defeats for women, including laws requiring parental notification, waiting periods, and widespread abuse of the so-called "conscience clauses, which were meant to allow individual doctors to refuse to perform abortions, but are now routinely invoked to cover whole institutions, who are motivated not by questions of conscience but by profits and politics.

Some states have even tried to pass laws requiring notification of the spouse, although so far, these have been declared unconstitutional. And lest we think these are only "backward" states, the case I read about was Pennsylvania.

As a result of this legislative and judicial attack, and the open terrorism directed against abortion providers and clinics in the 1980s, today 1/3 of American women live in counties where there are no abortion services. There is not a single doctor in North Dakota who provides abortions. Another very troubling and dangerous trend is the sharp decline in the number of medical schools that provide abortion training as part of their ob-gyn programs.

A new and very important feature of the restricting of reproductive rights is the impact of the explosion of for-profit health care, and the privatizing and merging of health care facilities. In many cases, when public hospitals merge with Catholic ones, they stop providing not only abortions, but family planning services of all kinds, including birth control and voluntary sterilization. And most states do not require hospitals that merge to inform the public of these changes. HMOs, always seeking to guarantee the profit bottom line, keep reimbursement rates too low and impose excessively burdensome requirements and paperwork, which in effect limit access to abortion.

As a result of all of this, abortion is legal, but its availability as a basic women's health service is, in actual fact, denied or limited for many, many women, mainly rural, young, poor, and minority women.

At the same time, sterilization abuse, mainly practiced against Black, Latina and other racially and nationally oppressed and poor women has in some cases been employed at genocidal levels. This seemingly contradictory situation -- attempts to restrict abortion, alongside involuntary sterilization -- in fact makes perfect sense given that the right's political and cultural offensive is both anti-woman and racist to the core.

And with 40 million people without health insurance, it's obvious that millions of women, working-class women, poor women, can't possibly be getting quality reproductive care.

A casualty of the right wing offensive of the '80s and '90s has been the ideological and moral high ground: an aggressive, well-funded and well-organized "pro-life" movement has succeeded in reframing the debate, and has put the women's movement on the defensive, with a large section of the pro-choice movement framing the question solely or mainly as one of individual choice (and that the choice is to not be a mother), and the right to privacy.

On this: I think we have to acknowledge the problems in the "privacy" argument, which can and has been used against women (the obvious example being on the question of domestic violence). There are also problems with relying on the "individual rights" argument -- because to truly have choices when it comes to motherhood or not, the majority of women need a society with a greatly expanded definition of rights, including but not limited to, the right to health care, the right to child care, the right to a job.

But, that said, we should employ any and all principled and reasoned arguments that uphold the right to abortion as something women must have.

A few thoughts on the theoretical side of the issue. And I have to say here that my thinking on this, though it's been getting a workout the last few months, was pretty rusty and dusty, and I think our Party has a ways to go to get up to speed on the Marxism-feminism dialogue/debate. There is a lot in it that relates to questions of reproductive rights and women's role in the family, which is interesting, and not just purely academic, either. It's interesting to me, because it gets you thinking about gender roles as socially determined, about society as something that changes and develops, and about the family as a historically determined form.

I won't claim to understand it all, or attempt to present it here, except to say this: the big debate, as I see it, has to do with the "whys"-that is, why are women and men unequal, why are women oppressed? Or, to put it in the present day context, why are women, and women's rights so much the target of the ultra right?

I think women are in the ultra-right bull's eye for a number of reasons, having to do with the its overall ideological agenda, which is to shore up capitalism in a period when the working class is being pushed back, when the ruling class seeks to restore and maximize profits via many avenues, including, though not limited to, fundamental cuts in social programs, privatization, and globalization. The ideological companion of this drive is the concept of the family as the sole legitimate and ideal source of support and survival -- even as the reality of working-class families' ability and resources for providing support are under all-sided assault. Private over public, the family over society, individual initiative over collective effort -- these are the ideological underpinnings of the corporate attack on the living and working conditions of the working class, and they are directly related to women's conditions of existence as bearers and primary caretakers of children, among other things.

And of course, the ultra right has also successfully used abortion rights and other "social issues" to divide and divert the people's movements.

Lastly, I would also say that in a general sense, although political democracy is the ideal form for capitalism, true rights and true freedom, true equality, are not part of that equation, or necessary to it, and in fact true gender equality is very threatening to a system based on division, competition and repression.

Getting back to the struggle for abortion rights: our attitude, our position, should be that the right to bodily autonomy and control over reproduction is necessary for women to be self-determining, autonomous, adult human beings. Communists must be part of the movement to defend that right, as worth defending in and of itself. But as socialist-feminist Johanna Brenner says in her book, Women and the Politics of Class, "bodily autonomy is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for most women's self determination." That is why we call for, and fight for, a broad definition of reproductive rights, including:
-- the right to safe, available, affordable, abortion;
-- the right to safe, available, affordable birth control;
-- the necessity of sex education;
-- healthcare for all, including pre- and post-natal care;
-- an end to forced sterilization;
-- paid parental leave, for women and men,
-- quality, public childcare and public education.

This is really a minimal program in order to make "self-determination" a reality for most women -- also necessary are good jobs, affordable housing, public transportation, elder care, quality schools and adult education, etc.

In the 1930s, my grandmother, a working-class Italian woman, had an illegal abortion, which developed into gangrene and almost killed her. She had two children and didn't want any more, because her husband was a batterer. In the 1950s, my aunt, a working-class Puerto Rican woman, a very gentle, maternal woman, also had an illegal abortion, which was so botched that was never able to have children.

I hesitated, but then decided, to include these personal stories because abortion is a very emotional issue; we shouldn't deny it, nor should we shrink from it. The Christian right and the anti-abortion movement have run with the emotional side of this question. Playing on people's ambivalent feelings and using distorted and false information they have fought for this turf and so far, they're winning. But I believe we can fight back, even on the emotional level, as well as on the moral and philosophical level. We have to connect and define the fight for reproductive rights with the fight for workers' rights and human rights.

But most important is that abortion is a political issue, an extremely important political issue, for this reason: the women's movement is a key element in the growing labor-people's coalitions, and it has and must continue to seek common cause with the other key movements. Constructing a broad approach to reproductive rights is necessary for building that common cause; we should help frame the demand for abortion rights in ways that build the working-class component of the women's movement.

Because of the breadth of the coalitions that are emerging, there are many, many opportunities to build unity on concrete demands and in the course of real struggle. For instance, the whole question of the role of the HMOs and the relationship between lack of access to reproductive care as part of the growing lack of access to any health care at all for millions of Americans -- there is common ground for the women's movement and the movement for health care, and of course with the labor movement.

Our approach to the question of reproductive rights -- to broaden how this demand is framed -- can help build unity between the women's movement and the labor, Civil Rights and other people's movements, unity which is an absolute necessity for the coalition to become strong enough, united enough, to fight and win.

This unity is absolutely necessary to fight the Bush administration; it's absolutely necessary to win elections, it's absolutely necessary to defend Roe v Wade, it's necessary to win union organizing drives, when you think about the composition of the working class today.

Our position -- that abortion is a woman's right, that it is about bodily autonomy, yes, about self-determination, yes, but also about health, about the right to choose to end a pregnancy and the right to have and raise children, and that our goal is a society that provides the material conditions necessary for both choices -- those concepts will deepen the politics of the coalitions that are emerging and which hold so much promise.

Our Party is mobilizing for the April 22 emergency action for women's rights in Washington, D.C. Our aim should be to participate in and help build the broadest possible local coalitions to organize for the march. A broad approach to reproductive rights, targeting the ultra right and its representative in the White House, can turn the April 22 demonstration into the first mass, militant protest against the Bush administration. It has that potential, and we should do everything we can to realize it.

We can help make the connections with labor, with the health care movement, with environmental organizations, with the equality movements, that some in the single-issue oriented abortion rights groups won't make. Although we recognize the emergency nature of the fight to defend abortion rights at this moment, and are committed to this fight, single-issue organizing - on abortion rights or any other issue -- is not a winning strategy. Of course many very important sections of the women's movement see this, see the need for unity with the labor movement. This coalition approach will gain strength in the course of united struggles against the right.

The challenge, the task, for the April 22 demonstration and beyond, is to be part of building a powerful, united, labor-people's coalition. It is the order of the day and the only way to win, on reproductive rights and the whole range of issues confronting our people.