Defend rights of rape, incest victims, NOW paper demands

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4 SOCIALISI CTION NOVEMBER 1989 On Oct. 25, the House sustained President Bush's veto of a bill permitting federally financed abortions for poor women who are victims of rape or incest. The bill, as originally passed by Congress, would have provided funding for victims who "report promptly" to law-enforcement or publichealth officials.

Nine states have added rape and incest exemptions to their bans on use of public funds for abortion. However, as detailed in a July 1989 handout from the National Organization for Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund, these very exemptions have proved unworkable and punitive.

The NOW paper points out that "in most states with public-funding exemptions for rape and incest, victims must report their .. Strategy (continued from page 1: “[Mass action: Key strategy to defend women's rights…]”) tions are urging the movement to shift the debate from the federal level to the states, and to respond to that shift by adopting an electoral focus. According to groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), electing pro-choice legislators is the main task of the movement at this time.

For this reason groups such as NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and others forced NOW into an agreement which compromised the national focus of the Nov. 12 Mobilization. In order to win the endorsement of these groups, NOW had to agree to build the action as an Eastern Seaboard event, instead of as a national action.

Still, NOW has been aggressively explaining to its burgeoning membership the vital importance of fighting for abortion rights on a national basis instead of state by state.

sexual attack within a predetermined number of days. The effect of these reporting requirements is to preclude most rape and incest victims from being able to take advantage of the exceptions allegedly created in their interest."

Reporting requirements ignore the trauma faced by women who are subjected to brutal rapes. Both rape and incest victims may be too frightened to reveal the cause of their pregnancies. Psychological denial of the assault is also frequently a factor with both categories of women.

Just as often, young incest victims who identify the incest as the cause of their pregnancy are not believed by adults around them who have a vested interest in denying the abuse.

Despite some improvements following the rise of the women's liberation movement, NOW President Molly Yard compares the need to organize the pro-choice movement on a national basis to the anti-slavery movement and the movement to end the Vietnam war, both of which succeeded because of their national focus.

The national news media-never a friend of women's right to choose-has played the role of aggressively pushing an electoral focus. Article after article tells us the fight for abortion rights has shifted to the states (despite the national attacks which are happening now and are still to come.

Molly Yard-the most important abortion rights leader because of NOW's role in mobilizing the largest and most militant demonstrations—has stopped being quoted. Instead, the media is projecting Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton and NARAL Executive Director Kate Michelman as the national pro-choice spokespersons.

The national media is owned and controlled by the same rich and powerful enemies of women's rights who run the political instituSylvia Weinstein ($1.25)

Marxism and Feminism: The Worldwide Struggle for Women's Equality ($1.50) Send order to 3435 Army St., Rm. 308, San Francisco, C 94110. Include 65 cents for postage and handling. Make checks payable to Walnut Publishing Co. women who report and seek prosecution of rapists are still made the criminal instead of the victim in many courtrooms around the country. Thousands of mothers have joined a new underground railroad, taking their children into hiding to keep them from being forced by courts to visit fathers who have molested them.

Rape is widespread

Of the over 1.6 million women who obtain legal abortions in the United States each year, about 1 percent, or 16,000, give rape or incest as the reason for their decision. About 4000 of this number would be poor enough to qualify for federal funding.

Rape and incest may be among the most underreported crimes in the country, however. The NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund paper on this topic reports that even the PBI tions of this country. Women's rights activists should look for the underlying reasons why the media has entered the debate over tactics and strategy, and carefully question their motives. The media has never shown any true concern over our basic rights—how can we respect their advice on how to defend them?

The extent to which the movement is swept up in electoral politics is the extent to which we will continue to be on the defensive and lose our precious rights.

Independent mass action!

The better strategy for the movement to embrace now is to jealously guard its independence from the two capitalist political parties-the Democrats and the Republicans -and its politicians, and to build its power through a national campaign of more, increasingly massive mobilizations.

The best way to protect our rights is to continue the pace set by the two giant 1989 Mobilizations called by the National Organization for Women in Washington, D.C., last April 9 and this Nov. 12.

Fundamental to this strategy is the continued, expanded, and active defense of familyplanning clinics in every community in the country against Operation Rescue's violence. When women are physically prevented from exercising their legal right to choice, abortion is not accessible.

We must remember that the Equal Rights Amendment was lost when the movement stopped mobilizing massively in the streets and turned to electing so-called pro-ERA legislators. That was the road to defeat—let's not travel down it again.

The stakes are greater now. Women's lives emption so that even the most brutal rape by a husband is not a crime."

Even in most of those states that have changed their marital rape exemption laws, the woman is not safe as long as the couple is living together. A wife has to be in the process of a divorce or separation in order to press rape charges against her spouse.

In addition to all of these difficulties, NOW's paper also points to a 1980 study showing that rape and incest victims most likely to be disbelieved when reporting these crimes are Black women, women who are reputedly promiscuous, women who know their attacker, and women who don't report the crimes promptly.

The survey showed that these women were less likely to have their complaints result in convictions or even come to trial. Yet, more Black women are raped proportionately to white women. As the NOW paper "states, "Once rape becomes the prerequisite to obtaining otherwise illegal abortions, disbelief of these women will be even greater."

The NOW paper concludes that, in order to safeguard the rights of rape and incest victims to safe and legal abortions, "we must ensure the rights of all women, regardless of their reasons, to abortion."

are on the line. Our movement should stay in the streets where it is powerful and independent. Let the politicians run scared while we mobilize the pro-choice majority in action to demand women's most fundamental right.

By SHIRLEY PASHOLK COLUMBUS, Ohio-Forty thousand people marched here on Oct. 29 in the largest pro-choice demonstration in Ohio's history.

Buses came from thoughout the state, including small towns in isolated rural areas. There were also large contingents of college and high-school students, including numerous religious colleges. The pro-choice march and rally was over twice the size of a "right-to-life" demonstration held the previous day in Columbus.

NOW President Molly Yard, one of the featured speakers, told the crowd: "We will rally in Washington, D.C., on Nov.

12 at the Lincoln Memorial. Just as Abraham Lincoln said that we cannot exist half-slave, half-free, we cannot exist with women half-enslaved and half-free.

We cannot exist with women free to have abortions in Hawaii and New York, and enslaved in Idaho, Louisiana, and Mississippi."

Among the other speakers at the rally were Governor Richard Celeste and Senator Howard Metzenbaum.

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