The fight for women's rights 15 years after Roe vs. Wade

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Over 75 abortion rights activists picketed the Calif. State Building in San Francisco on Jan. 22 to protest a cut-off in Medical funds for abortions. Thi picketers also protested against a new law which requires teenage women SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1988 11 INSIDE:

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On Jan. 16, the Boston branch of Socialist Action held a forum on "Fifteen Years After Roe vs. Wade: The Fight for Women's Rights." The featured speakers were Augusta Trainor, a 50-year veteran activist in the trade-union and women's movements, and Alexandra Folger, an activist in the women's movement and member of Boston Socialist Action. We are printing below excerpts from their talks.

Augusta Trainor:

Tonight we are celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Supreme Court Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion. What we are really celebrating is the 15th year of fighting to defend and maintain the Roe vs. Wade decision giving the women of this country the right to choose whether or not to bear children.

This is a landmark decision because abortion and women's right to choose should have been legalized many years ago. Think how many women's lives could have been saved had they not been forced to resort to back-alley, illegal abortions.

A celebration such as this should be a memorial to those women who died or were maimed as a result of illegal abortions. Let me briefly review the history of abortion laws in the United States.

Prior to the 19th century, all but a few states fotlowed the English common law on abortion. This law recognized the legality of abortion prior to "quickening"that is, the first fetal movements which usually occur in the fourth month of pregnancy.

According to historian James Hall, a growing number of abortions were performed or induced at this time. This was believed to be a result of the commercialization of abortion. Fully trained practitioners began to advertise abortion services and drugs that would induce abortion. Many doctors began a movement to prohibit these untrained practitioners from performing abortions.

At this time, abortion became acceptable to middle- and upper-class women. They began to have more abortions than previously.

Meanwhile, the movement to restrict abortion continued to develop. Some historians believe that the restrictions came as a result of a change in moral sensibility and the desire to deny women their independence by keeping them "barefoot and pregnant."

By the end of the 19th century, abortion became illegal except in a few states and where the pregnancy was endangering the life of the mother. And so it was to remain for many decades.

A landmark decision In the 1960s, the American Law Institute published the Model Abortion Law. Under this law, only a licensed physician could perform an abortion if the pregnancy was a threat to the physical or mental well-being of the woman. The law called for the physician and the hospital board to make the final determination for the abortion. Many states began to adopt this law.

Then in 1973 a dramatic decision on abortion came from the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in a tremendous victory for women and for the women's and nternational ваню 130 November ?). 1987 1085 S2. C$2 50 121r Subscribe today to International Viewpoint!

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What happened was a pregnant, single woman named Jane Roe, from Texas, instituted a class-action suit challenging the constitutionality of the Texas Criminal Abortion Law, which allowed abortion in a life-threatening situation only. She claimed the Texas statute abridged her rights of personal privacy and that she could not afford to travel to another jurisdiction to secure a legal abortion.

This case became known as Roe Vs. Wade. It is considered to be the cornerstone AN Access parental consent before obtaining abortions.

of reproductive freedom in the United States.

Still, despite the Roe vs. Wade decision, abortion rights are far from secure. Already, numerous organizations and institutions are waging battles to amend this law, beginning by restricting abortion rights for poor and young women. The women's movement must continue to mobilize its forces in order to stop the right-to-lifers from changing or eliminating this law.

In order to have a real right to choose, women must be given the right to safe, legal abortion on demand.

There are many difficult issues that we must face in this society today. Teenage pregnancy, sex education in the schools, school clinics dispensing birth control, schools educating both male and female children on equality of the sexes, and childcare facilities, to name just a few.

I for one intend to work and fight for a better society that will address these problems of women, the poor, the working class. I have been working for over 50 years to change society's ills, to make a new society, to make a better world for our children to grow up in, and especially for our daughters and grand-daughters.

What the hell, I'm going to keep on fighting and I hope you all will too because you're all young and you should have the energy to get out there and fight for a better society, and fight for women's rights which go hand in hand with creating a better society.

Alexandra Folger:

As you can see from Gustie's talk, it's been a long fight with a lot of history. She said to me that she'd be interested in hearing some of my personal recollections, as a member of the younger generation, of what I thought of the women's movement.

Gustie pointed out to me that most younger women take many of the gains of the women's movement for granted. Women my age cannot remember a time when abortion was not legal or when birth control was not generally available.

Because most of what I saw from my youthful vantage point outside the movement reflected the policies of the so-called leadership, I had a very ambivalent attitude toward what passed, in a large part of the movement, as "feminism." I realized that blaming men for everything wasn't going to get anybody very far.

The women's movement has made some very definite gains. The movement itself was a product of other social movements of the 1960s—for civil rights, against the Vietnam War, where masses of people were in motion and the women's movement took its cue from that in a lot of ways. It has also shown its ability to mobilize large numbers of people in support of these demands.

The women's movement had, in many ways, won the battle of ideas. Women's rights to equality and independence have now received generalized recognition. A majority of people in this country support a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

But the material conditions of women's lives today still leave much to be desired. Women make less than 64 cents for every dollar earned by male workers, who are also not paid what they're worth; childcare remains expensive, in short supply, and often inaccessibly located; and abortion İNTERNATICNAL MARXIST REVIEW vel. I. No. 4 wheeze 1957 62.10/$9 The significance of Gorbachev rights are far from secure.

A wrong strategy The defeat of the ERA also caused a tangible setback in the movement. I believe the misleadership of the women's movement was largely responsible for this. The main strategy of the leadership of the movement has been to actively support the Democratic Party—especially women Democrats-and to rely on "friendly" capitalist politicians. They've also relied heavily on the judicial system. This is a dangerous and ultimately futile policy, in my opinion.

The judicial system serves primarily to stabilize the existing system and only reacts favorably to mass popular demands when it is under extreme pressure. Judicial campaigns can only be successful in conjunction with independent, mass action and even then, the courts can be unpredictable and should not be relied upon.

Unfortunately, many recognized leaders of the women's movement continue to cling to the same strategy that led to the defeat of the ERA in the continual fight for women's rights.

Eleanor Smeal, past president of NOW, has launched her "Empowerment of Women" campaign, focusing on electing "pro-feminist delegates" to state and national Democratic Party conventions in order to nominate "pro-feminist candidates" for president and other offices. Smeal says that what stops people from voting is not apathy but the lack of alternatives—which is entirely true. But her alternative is more Democrats. "Fight now for our demands"

In order to keep the women's movement on course, it must be viewed as an important part of the wider movement for social, economic, and political justice; that is, the class struggle.

The overwhelming majority of women, like the majority of people, belong to the working class and that is where exploitation serves the interest of the capitalist system. Working men do not benefit from women's exploitation. A lot of women think so, a lot of men think so. It means educating them. The underpayment of women has the effect of driving all wages down, including those of working men. Chauvinism is a social fact, and an intolerable one. But when we work to educate men and ourselves, we must not lose sight of the fact that it is a product of the social conditions under which we live. Women's oppression will never be totally alleviated until we achieve socialism. But we will not achieve socialism without fighting for it now.

Women must push to have their demands put at the top of the agenda of the labor movement and must work to push this movement as a whole forward rather than separating themselves or counterposing themselves to it.

Women must mobilize themselves and would support the demands of women as well as men. As Gustie said, "To bring about a new society."

The winter 1987 issue of International Marxist Review contains reports from the 1987 International Executive Committee of the Fourth International. • "The significance of Gorbachev," by Ernest Mandel "Feminism in Latin America," by Heather Dashr "First lessons of the Philippine Revolution," by | Roman (with alternative positions by S. Brown, FIT/USA, and Socialist Action/USA)

"Revolutionary strategy in Western Europe," by Antonie Artous and Daniel Bensaid.

International Marxist Review is published three times a year under the auspices of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. A one-year subscription is $20. Se check payable to PEC to 2, rue Richard Lenoir, 93108, Montreuil, France.

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their allies in mass, independent, political actions with their demands to have a party for working people, a labor party, which