Why 'single-issue' vote is a trap for pro-choice mov't

Scan page 5

Pro-choice supporters who demonstrated their power in the streets are now Jan. 22, 1990, is the 17th anniversary of the historic Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, which declared that states could not pass laws restricting women's right to privacy in choosing an abortion.

Traditionally, Jan. 22 is a day of celebration. However, since July 1989, when the Supreme Court's Webster decision allowed states to place new and extreme restrictions on abortion, women have less to celebrate and now must fight harder to regain abortion rights.

Faced with the need to develop a plan to win back our most basic rights, several pro-choice organizations have unfortunately adopted an electoral strategy which includes the tactic of "single-issue voting".

"Single-issue voting" is the tactic of recruiting pro-choice supporters to work, raise funds, and vote for those candidates who support the pro-choice position, regardless of their positions on other important issues.

"Friends" of women's rights?

Proponents of the "single-issue voting" tactic have had to work hard to convince many activists in the pro-choice movement of the effectiveness of their approach. For one thing, most activists are also committed to a wide range of other women's rights issues—such as the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), childcare, pay equity, and much more.

In addition, many activists—including members of the National Organization for Women (NOW)-are fed up with the strategy of electing so-called "friends" of the women's rights movement. Time after time, these "friends" (once safely in office) have abandoned women's issues.

NOW members' anger and frustration with past electoral tactics led the organization to pass a resolution at their 1989 national conference which called for NOW to explore making a definitive break with the Democratic and Republican parties by establishing a new party committed to the "feminist agenda."

Since the NOW conference, however, NOW's national leadership has done much more to implement the old tactic of working to elect "friends" than to promote a break with the two ruling-class parties. In fact, the idea of breaking with the Democratic and Republican parties has been re-interpreted as 'lip service' to abortion rights.

to strike down the legislature's restrictions on abortion. Long an active opponent of women's right to choose, he is now the Democratic candidate for governor and cannot afford to be known as the man who helped roll back Roe v. Wade.

Hartigan is now declaring himself "pro-choice" in an attempt to keep Democrats from crossing party lines to vote for Jim Edgar, a Republican who has long been known as pro-choice.

A long. record of defeat "Single-issue voting" is clearly a new name for a very old tactic used by the being The Democratic and Republican parties divide the labor of representing the interests of the ruling class against the interests of the vast majority of working women and men in our society.

For instance, Barbara Boxer—a liberal, pro-choice Democratic Congresswoman from California-introduced a bill to provide federal funding for abortions knowing full well that the Republicans would not override the expected presidential veto.

Boxer helped create the illusion that there is a difference between Democrats and Republicans. She'll get the pro-choice vote, but women still don't have federally funded Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action to vote for politicians who give of a single-issue electoral tactic dooms good causes to defeat.

The only thing that legislators listen to is power. The power of the reproductive-rights movement is not represented by money or votes but by uncompromising mass action in the streets.

A major reason so many politicians are jumping on the pro-choice bandwagon is because 630,000 marched in Washington, D.C., last April 9 and close to 1 million rallied all over the country on Nov. 12. These actions clearly represented majority public opinion. These were the kinds of actions that cause the politicians to take notice-and even make concessions.

----- pull-quotes -----

KEEP - ABORTION SAFE LEGAL