Struggle for women's rights resurges as attacks increase

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10 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1989 "Our bodies, our lives, our right to decide.

This chant rang out in the late 1960s and early 1970s as women began organizing to fight for equal rights. In the United States, only two-and-one-half years after a militant demonstration of 50,000 placed the question of legalizing abortion on the agenda of the women's movement, the Supreme Court ruled that women have a constitutional right to abortion. The Jan. 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade decision placed women's decisions to have abortions under the realm of individual privacy.

Prior to the "second wave of feminism" in the 1960s, most efforts to legalize abortion in this country had been conducted on the erroneous basis of population control or medical ethics. The emergence of the women's movement fighting to control our bodies and thereby our lives changed the focus of the debate.

Movement activists did not see the right to choose abortion in isolation from other demands raised by the movement. The Women's National Abortion Action Coalition (WONAAC), for example, raised three interrelated demands under the heading of a woman's right to choose. The demands addressed areas where women's rights to make choices were being denied by the government and by the legal and medical establishments.

In addition to demanding that safe and legal abortions be available to all women, WONAAC demanded an end to forced sterilizations, which especially victimized Black and Latina women. The coalition also demanded access to the means of birth control for all women of child-bearing age. Teenagers, in particular, faced immense difficulties in obtaining birth-control pills, devices, and even correct information about pregnancy.

"Every child a wanted child"

Prior to the 1973 court decision, abortions were only available in a few states. It was apparent to every activist that working women and poor women and their families suffered most deeply from the restrictive laws. Women who could not afford to travel to places where abortion was legal or pay a private doctor in a state where restrictions existed were forced to go to "back alley" abortionists, who were often unqualified.

Self-induced coat-hanger abortions were common. Many women died from these botched attempts. Others were mutilated and unable to bear children in the future. The fight by the women's movement to reform abortion laws was clearly a fight for all women and would benefit working-class and poor men as well.

Women's groups also publicized the need for quality medical care throughout pregnancy for all of the women who chose to give birth. Literature stressed society's responsibility to provide the means for children to have adequate care and nutrition. "Every child a wanted child" was a familiar slogan.

The entry of women fighting visibly KEEP PS237202 allow individual states reenact restrict or ban abortions.

April 9 demonstration The Dec. 5 Time article mentions the "mammoth proAbortion Rights Action League (NARAL), has begun publicizing and obtaining support for this march. Yard recently addressed the convention of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) and won this important endorsement. [See box.] The demonstration was originally scheduled to focus on the planned reintroduction in 1989 in Congress of the Equal Rights Amendment. It is now billed as a National March for Women's Equality/Women's Lives in response to the serious threat posed to abortion rights.

Given the jeopardy in which women's lives will be placed if Roe v. Wade is overturned, this is a good decision. The issues presented by the ERA are not counterposed to, but are complementary to defending reproductive rights.

The April 9 march can unite all supporters of women's rights. Just as the issues of reproductive choice are interrelated, the issues most commonly discussed in relation to the ERA-equal pay for equal work, equal opportunity, and equal access to education—are not separate from the issues of personal choice that women confront in deciding when and how to raise children.

As long as women have less than real equality, choices about when and if to bear children are necessarily affected. If women cannot make decisions about our bodies, we cannot be equal in any real sense. Conversely, when access to birth control and abortion is limited, women are

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50 THE -BOMBING BORTION CLINICS! Action Beacock Socialist

choice demonstration" planned for April 9, 1989, in Washington, D.C." NOW, together with the National