[Mass action: Key strategy to defend women's rights…]

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Mass action: Key strategy to defend women's rights The Nov. 12 Mobilization, sponsored by the National Organization for Women (NOW) to defend women's right to choose safe, legal, accessible abortion, comes at the perfect time. Never has the need been greater for independent, massive, national mobilizations of women's rights supporters.

The attacks against women's fundamental right to control their own bodies have continued unabated at the national and state level since the July Webster decision. That decision gave state legislatures the power to restrict women's access to abortion by upholding the heavy restrictions imposed by the state of Missouri.

The Nov. 12 Mobilization in Washington, D.C., takes place on the eve of three more decisions on abortion cases before the U.S Supreme Court. Any one of these cases could be used as a handle to completely overturn the historic Roe v. Wade case which recognized a woman's right to privacy in her reproductive choices.

There have been a few small victories lately. In Florida pro-choice activists demonstrated in such powerful numbers that they prevented the Florida legislature from approving the governor's anti-abortion law. The U.S. Congress approved Medicaid funding for abortion for rape and incest victims.

But President Bush showed his contempt for women by vetoing that legislation. He also vetoed budget appropriations for the city of Washington, D.C., which included abortion funding for low-income victims of rape and incest.

The legislature of the state of Pennsylvania has passed the most restrictive abortion legislation yet. The new law requires a woman to get her husband's permission to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Now, in Pennsylvania, men's right to choose (for women) is the law, and the privacy provision of Roe v. Wade is null and void.

Following suit, the Michigan Senate passed a bill requiring parental consent for a young woman under age 17 to obtain an abortion, even if the pregnancy is the result of rape by the girl's father!

Most ominous, however, is the law that was just passed in Idaho criminalizing abortion and subjecting women who have abortions to jail terms up to five years and doctors who perform them up to 10 years.

Hand in hand with the governmental attacks on women are the extra-legal attacks by Operation Rescue (OR). This fanatical antichoice outfit regularly resorts to violence in its efforts to shut down family planning clinics. In a major challenge to pro-choice activists, OR has called for its police and veteran members to shut down family planning clinics in Washington, D.C., on Veterans Day, Nov. 11-the day before NOW's Mobilization at the Lincoln Memorial In the context of these vicious attacks, all supporters of women's right to choose must decide what strategy to employ in the months ahead in the struggle to secure our rights.

Many of the national pro-choice organiza(continued on page 4, in “Defend rights of rape, incest victims, NOW paper demands”) CHOICE NOVEMBER 1989 PRO CHILD FAMILY CHOICE Opponents of speak out See pp. 14 - 15 VOL. 7, No. 11 50 CENT

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/OMEN Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action