WHAT IS AT STAKE?

Reproductive rights is at the center of the overall war on fundamental freedoms. As abortions bans and restrictions expand, their consequences are becoming apparent in ways that not only affect the health and lives of pregnant people, but the destruction of other rights as well.

Just listen to who the opponents of reproductive rights like to blame: They say that since doctors and nurses offer abortion care, let’s scare them out of their professions and destroy the health care system. Since schools teach the wrong values, let’s cut school funding. Since there’s poverty, let’s stop helping the poor. Since people have mental issues, let’s make mental health care even more inadequate. And why should people with loose morals have any say? Let’s curtail their voting rights.

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, more than 20 million women of childbearing age in the United States lost access to abortion, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute. As of September 2023, nearly half the states, 23 in all, had abortion bans either in effect or pending; in 13 adjoining states in the South and Midwest, this makes it practically impossible to simply cross the nearest state line for an abortion.

Social media has been full of the human atrocities this causes. In Nebraska, a mother was sentenced to two years in prison and her daughter to 90 days in jail for an abortion, which they wanted because the daughter was in an abusive relationship. Law enforcement obtained private messages between the two on Facebook.

In Mississippi, a 12-year-old girl was raped, yet she could not obtain an abortion due to all the legal, financial, and travel barriers. She was forced to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

REPRODUCTIVE PRISON

The atrocities are everywhere. Clinics providing all kinds of care are closing and health professionals are moving out of states with draconian bans because of their inability to provide lifesaving care for those who have miscarriages and dangerous pregnancies, for fear of criminal prosecution. Travel restrictions and encouragement to report abortions by vigilantes lead to an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Those behind Texas’ bounty hunter abortion ban are demanding access to all patient information. The right to privacy and freedom to move without restriction is being struck down for this group, and will be for the majority soon.

In west Texas, Cochran County commissioners voted to let anybody file a civil suit against anyone suspected of using the county’s roads or airport to knowingly transport an expectant mother seeking an abortion. Cochran County is next to New Mexico, where abortion is legal.

Wendy Davis, a former Texas state senator, is a senior adviser at Planned Parenthood Texas Votes. She commented to the Texas Tribune: “This is an effort, one by one by one, to create a statewide ban against travel to other states, literally creating a reproductive prison in the state of Texas.”

In September, the U.S. Justice Department and the maker of the abortion pill Mifepristone (also known as RU 486) asked the Supreme Court to hear their request to reverse a lower federal court order that blocked U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug. Medical abortions make up half of abortions in the United States. If mifepristone is taken off the market, drug-induced abortions will remain available only with another drug called misoprostol, which may be less effective and safe.

These devastating attacks on health care services hit poorer people the most, especially black women and babies, who already suffer a high rate of mortality.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY

By contrast, the August 2022 defeat of the Kansas anti-abortion initiative foretold similar positive outcomes in the November midterms in California, Michigan, Kentucky, Vermont and Montana. There has been increased understanding that poor people voting in their own interests would result in huge changes.

In 2023, the spotlight is on Ohio, where supporters gathered 495,000 signatures for a ballot initiative in November to protect abortion access. In a hypocritical move, the Republican-controlled legislature tried to pass a legal hurdle requiring ballot initiatives to get 60% of votes to pass instead of a simple majority! Ohio voters saw through this undemocratic ploy and defeated the measure.

Now there is an all-out campaign to pass the November initiative. The group RuralOrganizing.org has pushed for campaigning in poor rural areas which the Democratic Party has ignored. Passage could energize related movements for democracy. However, defeat would further energize the fascist attack on other basic needs.

So far in 2024, there will be ballot initiatives in Maryland and New York and pending initiatives in Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and South Dakota.

The legal front is also hot. In Wisconsin, they are trying to nullify the election of state supreme court justice Janet Protasiewicz, who supports reproductive rights. Fifteen Texas women are part of a class-action lawsuit against that state’s abortion laws. These included a woman who nearly died of sepsis after being denied an abortion when her water broke at 18 weeks. Another woman was forced to carry a nonviable pregnancy to term and delivered a baby who died four hours later. Also more women’s support networks and collectives in abortion-restricted states are providing travel assistance or abortion medication.

The corporate war by the ruling class has sparked this new reproductive justice movement that benefits all the working class. It’s expressed in the mutual aid actions determined to help women get the healthcare they need. It’s expressed at the voting booths. It rests on a growing equality of poverty that has emerged, as more and more workers of all colors are displaced.

This is significant because the privileges granted to white workers over workers of color, to U.S.-citizen workers over migrant workers, and to men over women have kept the working class divided. Expanding Digital technology drives down the value of labor, forcing the ruling class to abandon the special privileges it used to keep the working class divided. This budding movement is giving us the basis for building class unity within a divided working class.

In every place where threats to reproductive health care attack people’s basic needs, we have a phenomenal new opportunity to end many oppressive ruling class policies that kept society in chains. As we act together to repel these threats and ensure reproductive health and all health care, we act as a new social force, put people ahead of profits and guarantee everyone has their basic human needs.

Just as the mechanical tools of industrialization made our society wealthy and powerful, the immensely more powerful electronic tools of digital production, including Artificial Intelligence, can free us from want and persecution – if they are in the right hands. That is because digital tools, like any tool that amplifies human power, can be used for liberation or oppression. Now that we have enough wealth in the society to guarantee everyone their basic needs, we need to make sure digital tools are used to create a society in which everybody thrives, instead of a society where half the people struggle in or near poverty.

Published on October 25, 2023
This article originated in Rally!
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