Mass action needed to defend abortion rights
1990Carole Seligman 1990-07Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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Another blow has been struck against woman's right to choose!
On June 25, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld state laws in Ohio and Minnesota that restrict teenagers' access to abortion by requiring parental notification. Like the Webster ruling last year, without making abortion completely illegal, the Court is making more and more inroads into its accessibility-first for poor women, and now, for young women.
Thirty-five states now restrict teens' access to abortion. One young woman has already died from self-induced abortion because of such a law in Indiana.
The Supreme Court's 1989 Webster decision opened the door for several states and territories to attempt to restrict a woman's right to choose. First, the island of Guam and then Pennsylvania and Michigan passed new restrictions.
Now, the Democratic Party-dominated Louisiana legislature is attempting to send women back to the back alleys with its law criminalizing abortion.
These attacks require the most forthright and energetic response from the women's We need another massive national mobilization in the spring of 1991 to keep abortion safe, legal, and accessible.
Unfortunately, the leadership of the National Organization for Women (NOW) is showing signs of retreating from the militant course of action they charted in 1989, turning instead to the electoral arena.
What mass action accomplished When the Equal Rights Amendment went down to defeat in 1982, some people thought that the women's rights movement was dead. But as soon as the Supreme Court and the government moved to attack the right to abortion, a virtual explosion of women's anger erupted. Militant demonstrations in defense of women's rights to control their own bodies took place across the country.
The giant NOW April 9 and Nov. 12 mobilizations in Washington, D.C. were the centerpiece of the remobilized pro-choice movement. Pro-choice supporters in every state and locality were swept into action.
Thousands of protest actions, teach-ins, petition drives-all tied to the Washington actions-involved millions of people, including tens of thousands never before active in the women's movement or any other cause.
Support among oppressed nationalities— African Americans, and other minoritieslabor unions, and youth was greater than at any other time in the struggle for women's rights.
And-best of all-the actions netted concrete results. New national polls showed a big increase in pro-choice opinion among the population at large. Idaho's anti-abortion legislation, inspired by the Webster decision (which had upheld the restrictive Missouri law), was vetoed.
Family-planning funds were restored in the California budget and, for the first time in 13 years, the California legislature is about to include abortion funding in the state budget.
Important victories were scored against Operation Rescue. The pro-choice movement outmobilized them at the clinics; and the courts-influenced by the pro-choice mobilizations-ruled against their blockades.
Democrats' dismal record
Four months away from the November elections, Democratic and Republican candidates for public office are falling all over themselves to court the feminist vote by claiming to have the best pro-choice, prowoman credentials.
Unfortunately, the NOW leaders seem determined to ignore the groundswell of disgust with the two major political parties expressed by the members at the 1989 NOW national conference. They have invited numerous Democratic Party politicians to address NOW's 1990 conference, including gubernatorial candidates Dianne Feinstein of California and Evelyn Murphy of Massachusetts.
Feinstein, however, was considered so anti-women's rights when she was the mayor of San Francisco that she couldn't even get NOW's support in the Democratic primary for governor.
San Francisco NOW members cited as reasons why they wouldn't support Feinstein, her attempts to scuttle comparable worth for city workers, her opposition to implementing voter-approved childcare programs, her (continued on page 8, in “The women's rights movement, population, and the environment”)