The ISL, RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 28.6.2022
Parades, pickets, demonstrations, marches, rallies, protests of millions of Americans during the war of Vietnam and the struggle for equal civil rights were common. With carefully-planned act of protest, refusing to give up her seat on a bus, NAACP activist Rosa Parks gave new vigor to the civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Black women were among the protesters arrested during a May 1963 civil rights march on Birmingham, Alabama, and were key organizers across the country for the 1963 civil rights March on Washington that featured Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1973, activists organized “Take Back the Night” marches and vigils around the country, which protested sexual assault and other violence against women.
Under the massive pressure the U.S Supreme Court, an essential part of the American imperialist state apparatus, ruled in favor of women’s abortion as part of their consistitunal rights in Roe v Wade in 1973.
This was an important reform but reforms that are not connected to the revolutionary struggle of the working class and its allies sooner or later will come under the attack of the ruling class and be reversed. The struggle for reforms to be really won must be connected to the revolutionary struggle.
As Rosa Luxemburg wrote: “At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contra pose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal – the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labor. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.” [1]
“And indeed, this week the SC of the USA struck down Roe v. Wade ending almost fifty years of the constitutionally protected right to abortion. This was done by the majority of the Judges in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that will have immediate impact, as thirteen states previously passed “trigger bans” on abortion that will go into effect within thirty days of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe. Many recent state laws banning abortions contain no exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
Republican legislators and anti-abortion advocates celebrated the decision. The rationale used to overturn Roe could be applied to other due process precedents, specifically mentioning Griswold v. Connecticut, which gave married couples the right to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, which legalized same-sex sexual activity across the country; and Obergefell v. Hodges, which gave same-sex couples the right to marry.” [2]
The White House knew that the Supreme Court intended to crush Roe v. Wade already on March 3rd and did not do anything to oppose it. On May 03, 2022 in Washington, DC. Democrat Leader McConnell called the leak of the draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade lawless and an act of intimidation. President Joe Biden has been bracing for the Supreme Court’s decision on his hands. Now he is calling to vote for the Democrats as the only way to change the decision of the Supreme court. If he wanted, he could use his executive power to build clinics in federal properties to perform the abortion. Instead, the senile President blasted the court’s decision in a televised address from the White House early Friday afternoon, lamenting what he called a “sad day for the court and for the country.” And he said he is directing the Department of Health and Human Services to take steps to defend access to certain medications, such as contraception and mifepristone — one of the pills used to induce a medication abortion.
“Ahead of the ruling, Biden had come under pressure from activists and Democratic lawmakers to use the full extent of his executive power to dampen its impacts. But White House officials sought to temper expectations for what the President would be able to do unilaterally to maintain access to abortion for the millions of women living in states where it is now expected to be outlawed” [3]
He is calling on the angry Americans taking to the streets to act quietly, peacefully and with respect towards the criminal judges that are going to be responsible for the death of pregnant women using unsafe methods by charlatans.
“I call on everyone, no matter how deeply they care about this decision, to keep all protests peaceful – peaceful, peaceful, peaceful,” Biden said. “No intimidation. Violence is never acceptable. Threats and intimidation are not speech. We must stand against violence in any form, regardless of your rationale” [4]
The truth is that Biden has at various points in his long career, shied away from a full embrace of abortion rights. He rarely uses the word “abortion” itself — an absence his aides downplay but that advocates say is still symbolic.
“The Democratic Party has not had any substantial response to the recent attacks on Roe. Their statements and brief denouncements of these egregious abortion bans and restrictions have been toothless and weak, hardly even mentioning abortion services the majority of the time,” said Crystal*, an abortion care worker in Pennsylvania. “The only credit I will give to any Democrats are those who advanced legal abortion protections in their states, such as in Colorado. However, as these actions do not wholly address the loss of autonomy and access in vast regions of the United States, they are entirely inadequate” [5]
Biden understands that the US has entered a deep economic crisis that will throw out many workers from their employment. He wants to see that the first mass victims of the capitalists he serves will be women.
It will be a huge mistake to vote for either the Republicans or the Democrats both are the class enemy of the working women, men and their allies. This is the time to build a worker’s party fighting to form a workers government committed to the working women and men.
Eugene Debs, in 1920 ran from prison “federal prisoner 9653”, for opposing the first imperialist world war for the office of President of the United States as a socialist enemy of the tween parties of the bandit capitalists. He addressed himself to the women workers.
The 1920 “To the Woman Voter” campaign leaflet seeks to establish Debs’s long time commitment to women’s rights. In this it is on solid historical ground. Throughout his life and in his varied political careers, Debs always spoke and acted in support of bringing full equality into the lives of women. His support of votes for women, equal pay in the workplace, a stance against the criminalization of prostitution, all demonstrate again Debs’s vision and, it should be added, a willingness to suffer for his socialist views unlike the pretender Sanders a liberal who spreads illusion in the Democrats, a social imperialist party. Two days ago, he tweeted: “Overturning Roe v. Wade and denying women the right to control their own bodies is an outrage and in defiance of what the American people want. Democrats must now end the filibuster in the Senate, codify Roe v. Wade, and once again make abortion legal and safe“
“Debs was aided in political work by a neighbor and friend, the pioneer woman activist journalist, Ida Husted Harper. When Debs served as editor of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, he invited Harper to conduct a “Ladies Department” column. For nearly twelve years, 1883-1894, Harper peppered the Magazine with material crafted specifically for lodge members’ wives, mothers, and daughters. She applied her feminist consciousness to subjects as wide ranging as the efficient organization of housework to the value of reading newspapers rather than novels. She got personal in her discussions of family size and indignant in regard to the treatment of women who chose not to marry. And many columns encouraged women to press for financial independence, improve public education, and work for the establishment of libraries. Needless to say, support for woman suffrage was aired regularly. Among Debs’s specific writings on women and women’s rights which have been anthologized are: “Fantine In Our Day” and “Woman–Comrade and Equal.” These are available in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr (ed.), Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs (1948)” [6]
Down with the twin parties of the class enemy!
Full abortion rights!
For a worker’s party fighting for a workers’ government!
Organize mass rallies and a general strike!
Endnotes:
[1] Rosa Luxemburg Reform or Revolution 1900
[2] www.cfr.org/blog/women-week-us-supreme-court-strikes-down-roe-v-wade
[3] CNN’s Maegan Vazquez. edition.cnn.com/2022/06/23/politics/joe-biden-abortion-supreme-court/index.html
[4] www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/24/biden-condemns-supreme-court-dobbs-jackson
[5] therealnews.com/democrats-have-no-plan-to-stop-the-overturning-of-roe-v-wade
[6] debsfoundation.org/index.php/landing/debs-biography/womens-rights/