Women need to remobilize

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By The recent offensive by Operation Rescue, an activist component of the broader "Rightto-Life" network based in Binghamton, N.Y., has visibly challenged a woman's right to obtain a safe and legal abortion.

Beginning with their demonstrations in Atlanta during the Democratic Party National Convention, thousands of Operation Rescue members have been arrested as they barricade abortion clinic entrances, seeking to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights. They have the effrontery to liken their tactics to those used by the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which fought to ensure-not deny-equal rights for Black Americans.

Operation Rescue continued to test the response in various cities, culminating in their Oct. 29 target date, when they threatened to show up in some 30 cities to prevent women from obtaining abortions. Police and other authorities in every city were uniformly slow to move against the Operation Rescue people even after they began to block entrances to the clinics.

These anti-choice forces were temporarily successful in their efforts in a couple of cities, but in most places abortion-rights groups organized defense or escort services and kept the clinics open and functioning.

The most effective effort by pro-choice groups took place in Boston, where over 2000 people were mobilized by the National Organization for Women (NOW). These demonstrators were stationed along a street where several clinics perform abortions. Their mass presence deterred the Operation Rescue caravan from entering Boston.

Ruling-class attacks

Since the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in this country, forces opposed to a woman's right to control her body have taken every possible opportunity to reverse this decision and make abortion illegal.

The activities of Operation Rescue are but a part of broader attacks against women's rights initiated at the top levels of government and supported by both parties, Democrats and Republicans alike.

These parties, which represent the capitalist class, are in the process of pushing forward an austerity drive designed to drive down real wages and break the back of the union movement. The accompanying attacks on women's rights are, in the last analysis, designed to drive women back into the home and out of the job market, which would make the task of lowering all wages easier.

In addition to clinic bombings and other acts of terrorism very lackadaisically investigated by authorities, various "Right-to-Life" organizations have spearheaded efforts to introduce parental-consent provisions limiting teenagers' access to abortions.

LOS ANGELES-Hundreds of AIDS NE Angeles in January 1986 are vitally needed. National and local mobilizations of all PuL the Ters put the anti-abortion forces on the defensive.

supporters of women's rights are required to Despite the well-financed campaigns by all of the anti-choice groups, backed by the Catholic Church hierarchy and other reactionary forces, the majority of the population continues to support a woman's right to control her body. The pro-choice demonstrations organized by NOW in 1986 were the largest in U.S. history.

But most of the attacks on abortion rights over the past several years have not been met with large protests despite the wider acceptance of the demands of the women's movement. With only some exceptions, the women's movement became largely demobilized following the defeat of the ERA.

Along with many participants in other social protest movements, large numbers of pro-choice activists perceived the elections of Reagan (and now Bush) as an indication of a