Labor union women has deprived many working-class women, especially women of the oppressed nationalities in the United States, of the ability to implement their right to abortion. There are fewer than 12 states that still fund join NOW in fight for abortion for poor women. Attempts have been made to deprive young women of this right by ruling that women under 18 must have parental abortion rights consent. Funding for abortions for women in the military and federal government is being cut off.
Most recently, toward the end of
THE NATIONAL Organization for Women (NOW) has called for massive demonstrations in Washington, DO, on March 9 and Los
Angeles on March 16, to defend women's right to abortion. These marches, which are also commemorating International Women's
Day (March 8), are the culmination of a campaign launched by NOW at its national convention held last year in New Orleans.
The following article is based on an interview with Andrea Morrell, a member of the leadership of the American Socialist Workers Party, who was asked to comment on the general situation of the women's movement in the United States.
ANDREA MORRELL
The call for demonstrations by
NOW was preceded by a vast national drive for one million signatures on petitions affirming the right of women to control their own bodies.
These steps by the largest feminist organization in the United mark an important turnabout in the women's movement which has been somewhat discouraged and alized since the defeat of the Equal
Amendment (ERA) to the
Constitution in support for the ERA had rallied from many sectors of the society including the labor movement, but could not stop the ruling-class offensive that with the failure of the state and, effectively, the end of the drive women's liberation movement was to cause a rethinking of strategy. The leadership of NOW came to the conclusion that it was necessary to rely on marches, actions and the building of a movement, and more on the election of politicians friendly to women's rights.
This inevitably involvement
Democratic Party election campaigns.
The climax to this involvement came in the 1984 presidential campaign when nearly the entire organization turned into a doorbell-ringing machine
Mondale-Geraldine
Ferraro ticket. Part of the enthusiasm for this ticket was due to the notion that women would benefit from the election of a female as vice president of the United States. The Mondale-
Ferraro austerity platform soon showed how false this notion was.
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Adding to the sense of discouragement among women throughout this period of Ronald Reagan's presidency has been the use of the executive power as a weapon against the working class in general and women in particu-
Reagan has always opposed the ERA, and he is especially vociferous in his opposition to legal abortion. At the beginning of 1985 he sent a message encouragement by telephone to participants in an anti-abortion demonstration, and just recently he sent a telegram expressing sympathy to the funeral of a fetus. He is thus completely identified with the most right-wing, fetus-fetishist opponents of women's right to control their own bodies. by many reactionary people in both parties. The result of this encouragetwo years has been a dramatic increase abortion-clinic bombings vigilante raids on these clinics during the hours that they are open and are having abortions. These attacks have provoked such outrage recently the Department Justice has been forced to prosecute convict the most notorious of these outlaws, the Florida "Christmas assaults on abortion rights since 1975 have cut deeply into the whole social fabric for women, especially poor and working women. The cutting off of Medicaid [since 1976 a program of medical aid for those to afford financed by the state and federal governments] funding for abortions
1985, the Reagan administration, pushed the Supreme Court into a sweeping review of Roe VS. Wade [the landmark 1973 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that a state may not prevent a woman from having an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy] by asking it to pass on the constitutionality statutes in two states, Pennsylvania and Illinois, which negate legal abortion. A decision should be returned soon, and one upholding the statutes would wipe out the 1973 victory. The rebirth of protest
The response of NOW to these attacks needs to be placed in context. Since the 1984 presidential campaign into which all the social movements -women's, peace, labor - plunged, first into the Jesse Jackson campaign and then into the Mondale-Ferraro, there has been a rethinking going on in these movements. The year 1985 saw the rebirth of protest, including the most significant action to date against US involvement in Central America and Caribbean, the
20 demonstrations 100,000 people participated nationwide. South Africa and protest against apartheid have moved into the center of US politics, in the labor movement, on the campuses and in many comcampuses are involved in these campaign. And, indeed, NOW, at its convention, targeted young women as a primary constituency to get involved
Until the new NOW initiative there had not been since the defeat of the ERA any very visible and aggressive public action the part of the organized women's liberation forces. Nevertheless, a whole generation of young women are now playing activist and leadership roles in organizations that oppose the US war machine and in the Free South Africa more ments. It was noticeable that at April 20 demonstrations, International Viewpoint 10 M
NOW was not there as an organization, there were thousands upon thousands of young women, many of them wearing feminist or ERA T-shirts but who were there marching against the war. There are women who are central leaders of some of the big antiwar organizations such as Mobilization for Survival.
We are seeing a response, too, by women activists to the social measures taken in defense of women's rights by the Nicaraguans and, earlier, the
Executive. It has not yet managed to overcome a basic problem - its domination by a bureaucratic trade-union leadership and the fact that it does not really organize women at the base of the unions.
But the very fact that it still exists is a positive factor for all those who to a women's organization. following the defeat of ERA, CLUW has again become more
SPANISH STATE meetings and participation in demonstrations. As an organization it plays a progressive role, especially because of its multiracial character - the presence of Black and Latin American women within it. If the movement for abortion rights continues to develop and broaden, CLUW will be important in bringing the movement into the center of the labor movement, which, in turn, will have a positive effect on CLUW itself.
have activists
Grenadans.
Women pointed out that at least in Nicaragua under the Sandinista government there is an ERA because women's equality