By Mary Ann Curtis,
Naperville, Ill.
Texas governor Greg Abbott and his bounty-hunting bully buddies are on the prowl for women, their abortion-providers and anyone who aids them. Under protection of the Texas abortion ban, State Senate Bill 8, they ran to the U.S. Supreme Court for cover and assistance.
How can anyone believe these officials support saving lives while they spew hatred and death for women and our centuries-long fight for jobs, educational opportunities, and economic independence? Why do they promote federally-funded sterilization programs and refuse to lift the Hyde Amendment to pay for Medicaid abortions? Forced sterilization is genocide; the opposite of the right to choose, when and if one bears a child.
Entrenched opponents of a woman’s constitutional right to control her own reproduction are no more reconciled to the gains women have made than white supremacists are to the gains black people have achieved during and since Reconstruction after the Civil War.
The KKK operated as a lawless shock troop of the white aristocracy to rain terror on blacks after the Civil War. Clinic fire-bombers served as the terrorist arm of the anti-feminist right-to-life movement after Roe vs. Wade became national law in 1973. Unable to overturn legal abortion with vigilantism, they turned to legislation and court cases to undermine reproductive rights state by state. Now, defenders of Texas SB 8 ask the U.S. Supreme Court, not only to stop abortion, but to mobilize vigilantes to do it!
The U.S. right-wing establishment has not only stepped up assaults on abortion rights, It goes hand in hand with attacks on transgender folks and those who identify as non-binary, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or queer, anyone who upsets the hetero-sexist status quo. Voting rights and the rights of workers to unionize are on their chopping block. Why? To keep those who work underpaid and in the kitchen, instead of demonstrating in the streets for constitutional rights, civil liberties, and living-wage jobs. They will stop at nothing in their efforts to destroy the gains of the feminist, civil rights, and labor movements, all of which demand economic, social, and political equality.
Despite today’s roll-backs and challenges, I and my sisters in Radical Women remain optimistic that women and our allies have the capacity to recover and strengthen reproductive rights. It will take a democratic, militant, multi-racial, multi-issue, intersectional movement, led by the working class to defeat the right-wing. It’s clear we can’t count on public officials and the courts to do this for us. To win, also requires uniting to fight for an economic system that prioritizes the human needs of the majority over the private profits of the few. Comprehensive medical care, paid family leave and childcare help babies and their working or low-income parents thriving. Those priorities stand in contrast to police, weapons, and ammunition, that serve to protect the private property of the rich and to dehumanize and kill the poor.
The potential for a strong working-class reproductive justice movement is based on objective reality. Today, there are more working women and our allies in key economic sectors and in union leadership than at any time in history. Teachers, nurses, postal carriers, transit operators, governmental, and grocery, workers and librarians are key examples. These essential workers have helped us through the COVID-19 pandemic. They remain on the frontlines fighting for family leave, childcare, universal health-care, humane immigration policies, voting rights, and union representation. Their sheer economic weight and connections to the communities they serve lay the basis for a winning labor and community alliance to save and expand reproductive freedom. With its broad popular support, this working-class movement won’t need vigilantism to accomplish its goals!
Mary Ann Curtis, an organizer for Naperville Radical Women, an international socialist feminist organization, has defended abortion clinics under attack by right-wing vigilantes since 1985. She resides in Naperville where she co-led a rally in support of the October 3, 2021 Remember Rosie Jiménez National Mobilization for Reproductive Justice.