IV spoke to two American soclalist feminists, Claire Cohen from Fourth Internationalist Tendency and Camille Colatosti from Solidarity about the history and current state of the struggle for a woman s right to choose In the United States.
The interview took place In Amsterdam in mid-September
AN you give us some background to the rise of the
• anti-abortionists in the
USA?
Claire Cohen: There was a general development of an anti-feminist agenda on the far right in the 1970s. Roe v Wade, legalizing abortion, was passed in 1973, and was opposed from the beginning by these groups; in 1977 they were successful, when Congress passed the Hyde amendment to take away Medicaid funding for abortions (States also contribute so it wasn't an end to all funding).
On the basis of this victory Operation
Rescue came into being, in reality headed by a man, Randall Terry. This was a vicious group, who went in for bombing clinics.
I went to an interview with Terry and it was quite clear that for him this wasn't a single issue; he saw it in the context of turning back the tide for women's rights.
He thought that women had got "too much leeway" and should be put back in their
Camille Colatosti: Terry is a fundamentalist preacher who wanted to capitalize on this issue and gain a lot of fame. At first it was mostly Catholics that were anti-abortion, but Randall Terry has been able to mobilize a broad coalition. He has an ideology, but most of his followers - the people who block the clinics - look much the same as the people who are demanding abortion rights, and a lot of them are young women.
Operation Rescue had some success in shutting down clinics. However their fame was short-lived since there were a lot of arrests and funds were depleted, although they can still mobilize as was shown by a big anti-abortion demonstration lasting many days that took place recently in Wichita, Kansas, at which they vowed they would shut the clinics down.
Claire: Many of these clinics are not just abortion clinics but are women's health clinics, which offer pregnancy or contraceptive advice and often broader counselling services. In Pittsburgh, for example, these are the places that women under 18 would go to for advice about things they didn't want their parents to know about.
In Kansas they were doing things like lying children down in the street in front of cars — this was a gamble by Randall Terry trying to make a comeback by doing something spectacular. There was a big uproar from the community about this, and the anti-abortionists hurt themselves. Some of the methods used by the pro-abortion camp could backfire.
For example lawyers used an act relating to conspiracy, saying that since Operation Rescue carried out bombings, their demonstrations were criminal conspiracies. I went to a debate about this, since, although it had been very effective against Operation Rescue, it could be turned round against the left.
Camille: Reagan had a much more clearcut position against abortion than Bush. The ruling class is split on the issue; there was a moment during the Reagan administration when the Republican Party itself split on the issue, with people considering that its anti-abortion line might be a liability. This did not mean that they came out for women's rights, but they did not come out with the same extreme rhetoric on the question.
While Reagan made a big deal out of anti-abortionists Supreme Court, Bush has tried to appoint people who have never taken a position and who won't attract the same response from civil rights activists.
Claire: The anti-abortion movement is
Pennsylvania the anti-abortionists have perhaps a slight majority in terms of public support. But they have become more sophisticated. They concentrate on issues such as minors having abortions, and parental consent. Then there is the false charge that some of these abortions are to get rid of female
RULES
3 initiali) 81 foetuses — this is not a problem in the United States.
Pennsylvania has a case moving towards the Supreme Court; the state has made a law according to which a woman has to get the permission of her husband, even if she's divorced, to have an abortion. There is also a 24-hour waiting period after signing that she wants an abortion — to prevent women from making "snap judgements". During that time people would have the opportunity to influence them.
The big problem here is that Pennsylvania is a large and mainly rural state with two big cities — Pittsburgh and Philadelphia — in which more than half the population lives. Women have to go to the cities to get an abortion; it can take them hours to get there and then they have to find somewhere to stay for 24 hours.
Camille: The anti-abortionists have a sophisticated strategy; first of all they attacked poor women through cutting off Medicaid, now the target is young women, with the issue of parental consent. Then there is the "rights of the father" business. Then you can insist on additional tests, which need extra equipment that the clinics might not be able to afford.
Claire: Poor women can get an abortion on Medicaid in cases of rape, incest and deformation of the foetus. However the rape or incest must have been reported to the police within 48 hours, and the police must have decided that this is a case worth pursuing in the legal system. In fact, most cases brought before the police are not proceeded with. Thus, it is now legally the case that if the police do not pursue a case of rape or incest, they would with welfare traud. This Bast wome 2% vith welfare fraud. This hasn't happened
CANADA — Legal stalemate leaves choice free
"THERE is a fairly positive situation now where there is no Federal abortion
International Viewpoint #215 • October 28, 1991 women don't plan to get pregnant. In their condition things happen to you, and if you're a woman one of the things that happens is that you get pregnant. If they want an abortion, given the obstacles, they often can't get it together until it is too law. In 1988 Dr. Morgenthaler went to the Federal Supreme Court to challenge the Federal abortion law, and won. The conservative government decided that this was not good at all. There was also a lot of pressure from the anti-choice camp — in Canada largely the Catholic church with some of the Protestant fundamentalists as in the US.
"In the fall of 1989 the government introduced a bill — different from the previous one — to re-criminalize abortion. It left doctors open to criminal charges, a situation they didn't like! It was introduced into the House of Commons where it narrowly passed, but there was a tied vote in the Senate, which means there is
"From 1969 on there was a law which allowed "therapeutic abortions" with the agreement of two doctors. Women mobilized throughout Canada against this law. Then Dr. Morgenthaler directly challenged the law; he was brought to trial and acquitted by juries in Quebec — supposedly the most anti-choice part of
Canada because of the influence of the Catholic Church — numerous times. It became clear that the law could not be enforced. Morgenthaler then set up clinics in other parts of Canada and the process of trial and acquittal resumed. The
Morgenthaler clinic in Toronto became a focus of struggle, with rallies outside.
There was a strong socialist feminist current in Toronto, the Ontario Coalition for Abortion Clinics, which still exists.
"There are provincial regulations — but there are no local anti-abortion laws.
The clinics have been set up in many different places. There is a Medicare system in Canada. There was a period when Medicare was not paying since the
Morgenthaler clinics were outside the system; the clinics operated a system where those who could pay paid, those who couldn't didn't.
"However the struggle is not yet over and the government will produce another law, and the anti-choice forces can expect significant help from the
USA. The situation is good, but for reasons which may make it temporary."
CATHY BARKER (Socialist Challenge / Gauche Socialiste, Canada) * yet, but I am sure that this turns some women away from having an abortion.
• Does the anti-abortion campaign have real mass support, or is it a well conducted guerilla campaign largely at the level of the institutions?
Camille: It was a very well-organized campaign at the institutional level. However, whenever surveys have been done about how people feel about women's right to choose, it depends on the question. People respond differently to different reasons — the right to choose gets less support for example when the reason given is financial, more if a woman says she wants to continue her education. On the whole people support the right to choose, but if you make it look as if the woman is being selfish then support drops.
Claire: Most polls show that the majority of the public believe in a woman's right to choose; however, they also increasingly show that more more and more people believe that minors should get the permission of at least one parent.
Camille: Feminist forces have not mobilized in such an effective way as the anti-abortionists, who have operated on a
24 whole ne of very big demonstrations for whole number of fronts. There have been the right to choose.
Claire: From the beginning, from the time of Roe v Wade, the big problem of a lack of solidarity between races has been apparent. When the anti-abortion forces started chipping away at poor women, there was not a big mobilization around that.
Camille: The National Organization for Women (NOW) thought at that time that if they took up the Medicaid issue they would lose Democratic Party support. About ten years later they realized they had made a mistake.
Claire: In Pittsburgh, many of the leaders of the pro-choice movement are middle class professionals. One of the richest women in the USA is involved and she wants to steer the movement towards voting for the Republican candidate.
In Pennsylvania we had a fight to get the movement to call for abortions to be safe, legal and affordable. Black feminists were saying that if it was not affordable it wasn't accessible. At first we were told that the Democrats wouldn't go for that. It took a lot of work to win people away from that line of thinking.
Another problem is the criminalization of pregnancy in women who are drug addicts. This is a choice issue in the same way as the right to have an abortion. Such late. If they don't there is a lack of drug treatment centres.
I'm a doctor and I did a lot of research on this issue for a talk, and I found that nobody even knows if it is a good idea to take these women off drugs when they are pregnant. In fact there is no clearcut evidence that cocaine by itself is a danger to the foetus.
These women's problems are due to their poverty, poor nutrition and so on. These women can be arrested, can be forced to have an abortion, or the baby can be taken away, or the woman put in jail. The point is that the pro-choice movement has not been able to develop a practise that can appeal to diverse groups of women and bring them into the movement.
Leaders of the pro-choice movement often say things that alienate women of colour. One, Molly Yard, President of NOW, got up and said in effect that we want abortion so that all those poor Black women can get rid of their babies.
There was a movie made about a young woman who died of an illegal abortion. She was blond-haired and blue-eyed. It was a good film in many ways, but every time they talked about women dying from abortion, they showed this blond-haired, blue-eyed woman. When they talked about unwanted babies, they showed Black babies. All this repels women of colour from the movement.
Camille: The National Organization for Women is not a democratic movement where you can go in and argue for your line. Make the Democrats toe the line is the policy.
The demonstration in Wichita Kansas got tremendous media coverage. They picked a place where there is little feminist activity. NOW mounted one small action.
The latest thing is the nomination of Clarence Thomas — a right wing AfricanAmerican — to the Supreme Court. Thomas is opposed to almost every liberal gain over the past twenty years for women. There is a certain mobilization to keep him off the Supreme Court. He has never written a controversial decision on abortion.
Claire: When he was head of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) he left 13,000 discrimination cases to expire undealt with — he didn't even rule against them. Thomas' nomination is a crafty move by Bush, since his opponents can be painted as racists. But in fact he has never espoused Black self-help. He believes in his own career and to hell with everybody else. But his opponents don't know how to appeal to the mass of African-Americans. *
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