Which way forward for women in 2017?

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Hundreds of thousands are joining the Women’s March on Washington on Jan. 21. On the same day, at least 200 sister marches are taking place in cities and towns all over the United States.

The outpouring, which reportedly began as two social media posts in response to the defeat of Hill­ ary Clinton by a grossly misogynist Republican Party candidate famous for joking about sexually assault­ ing women, has grown in less than two months into a massive and historic event, endorsed by the major women’s rights organizations. The chairs of the co­ ordinating body include three prominent women of color from non-profit organizations involved in fight­ ing racism, police brutality, and surveillance.

Women from all walks of life, many of whom have never marched in a feminist demonstration, are get­ ting on buses and trains to make their mark on the Trump inauguration spectacle and to flex their politi­ cal muscles in anticipation of what will likely be the most concerted assault on reproductive justice and the lives of working women since the 1980s. The new administration’s agenda The Trump administration that is being assembled has given every indication it will carry out a serious, perhaps devastating, attack on reproductive justice and the wages and welfare of low-income families. An assault is planned on abortion rights; the acces­ sibility of contraception; overall health care; educa­ tion; working conditions and standard of living of low-wage women; the few remaining social safety nets for children; and the movements for Black lives, immigrant lives, and Muslim lives, all of which are an­ chored by women.

Trump and the anti-woman right wing that has the majority in Congress promise to immediately defund Planned Parenthood. The right-wing establishment is expected to quickly try to prohibit the non-profit from receiving any federal insurance payments, including Medicaid. Since the use of Medicaid funds for abor­ 12 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 2017 tion services was prohibited in 1976, the new block­ ing of Medicaid and similar payments would translate into the cutoff of the most basic gynecological and reproductive health service to some 1.5 million lowincome people.

At the same time, quick action to undo parts of the already horribly inadequate Affordable Care Act may eliminate the alternative funding source for this kind of care for 55 million women, men, and young people.

Trump also pledged to quickly pass a national ban on abortion after 20 weeks. The 20-week ban, already enacted in 16 states, is particularly mean-spirited as it impacts women around the time that most fetal abnormalities become apparent. It is also a restric­ tion on abortion that disproportionately affects lowincome women, who, in order to take advantage of increasingly scarce facilities, often need time to raise funds, find transportation, arrange time off of work, and so on.

And while Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and other organizations have sometimes successfully fought the rush of reactionary state legislative measures driven through by new Republican majorities in the courts, the likelihood of a federal measure, and the growing limitations on access, are already resulting in deadly DIY abortions and victimization flowing from new ef­ forts to criminalize women who fail to bring pregnan­ cies to term.

Democratic Party: ally or foe?

The defunding of Planned Parenthood, the end of Affordable Care Act subsidies for contraception, and a federal ban on abortion after 20 weeks are just the tip of the iceberg of the Republican majority’s sexist wish list—which begins with the prize of overturning Roe v. Wade. But, of course, the undermining of that 1973 decision legalizing abortion began the day after it was first ruled. Both Democratic and Republican Congresses and presidents have continued to weaken it ever since.

While there is, today, a well-publicized legislative effort to overturn the Hyde Amendment, which de­ (Above) Last year 7 million women in Poland took to the streets, and thousands walked out of work. As a result, the right-wing government withdrew legislation attacking women’s reproductive rights.

nied poor women funding for abortion, this divisive amendment only stayed on the books for 40 years because successive Democratic majorities refused to junk it.

It must also be said that the erosion of national sup­ port for reproductive justice to its current 69% has been the product not only of the treachery of main­ stream politicians on both sides of the aisle but of the decision of mainstream women’s rights and repro­ ductive justice groups to keep the struggle on the tiny playing field offered by Democratic and Republican Party politics.

Should these groups have relied on the party that initiated the racist 1996 “welfare reform” and dis­ mantled the major safety net for low-income women and their children to defend abortion rights? Was it rational to look to the Democratic Party, whose crimi­ nal justice “reform” destroyed communities of color with the tools of the mass incarceration and surveil­ lance state? Whose full-throated support for barbaric U.S. military interventions led to astonishing levels of rape, death, and other victimizations of the women and children of Afghanistan and Iraq?

Did it make sense to continue to let the Democratic Party set the agenda for our defense when they basi­ cally threw women under the bus in the implementa­ tion of Obamacare?

Julia Felsenthal, who profiled several of the ma­ jor leaders of the Women’s March on Washington for a July 10, 2017, article for Vogue, concluded that their commitment to a large intersectional progres­ sive movement “could offer a blueprint to the flail­ ing Democratic Party.” If we are to face the doubling down on women of the most reactionary wing of the big business parties, this unspoken but seemingly ob­ (continued on page 7, in “Mariela Castro and Cuba’s LGBT revolution”)