Three More Reasons Why This System Cannot Liberate Women and Must Be Overthrown

May 9, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a Revolution Club member:

#1 – Laws that “humanize” fetuses and DE-humanize women

Despite the fact that fetuses don’t feel pain, Utah now requires women having abortions later than 20 weeks into the pregnancy have anesthesia administered to the fetus. The governor who signed the bill into law, who claims to be “adamantly pro-life,” is adding a dangerous, medically unnecessary element to the relatively simple procedure of abortion at that stage. This is happening in the midst of an avalanche of bans on abortion earlier and earlier in the pregnancy, making abortions difficult to impossible to obtain, and further reinforcing the notion that a fetus is a baby, and a woman’s life is expendable outside of her ability to reproduce. This law and those like it bend public opinion toward the false notion that a fetus is a small and vulnerable person, which it is NOT, and a woman’s body is merely a vessel for its passage, which it is NOT.

* Fetuses are not babies, abortion is not murder, and women are not incubators. For more on this, see previously published revcom.us articles: “What is an Abortion and Why Women Must Have the Right to Choose...” and “A Fetus Cannot Feel Pain, but a Woman Denied the Right to Abortion Suffers Intolerable Pain.”

#2 – Laws that cripple, close, and mischaracterize abortion clinics

Last week, the Alabama Senate approved a bill that would prevent abortion clinics located within 2,000 feet of a K-8 public school from opening, or renewing their license when it expires, as if abortion is something immoral that endangers children. Similar laws are used for liquor stores. Abortion clinics are much-needed health clinics, which specifically help women gain some control over their lives! Because of this bill approved last week, the existence of Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives—the last fully functioning, “up-to-code” abortion clinic in Alabama—is threatened. In fact, this bill’s only immediate effect will be to shut down the last clinic in the state, the only one that has managed to comply with all the current regulations, including millions of dollars of renovations necessary to meet other, equally unnecessary, legal mandates.

#3 – Policies that silence and endanger the doctors and others who dare to tell the truth about abortion

Last fall, 11 people were shot and three killed at an attack on a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs. The gunman clearly said in court that this was about “saving babies,” and again, the terror against abortion providers and women was violently reasserted. Among others, Washington, DC, doctor Diane Horvath-Cosper spoke out in the face of that, telling MSNBC that she was not deterred. Soon after, people at the highest levels of the hospital she works at called her in and told her not to talk to the press like that; they didn’t want to attract attention to the fact that the hospital provided abortions. Now, the doctor has filed a civil rights suit against the hospital. Dr. Horvath-Cosper said, “Our silence has never and will never protect us. Patients deserve better than shame and secrecy,” and she is right. Policies like this reflect a deadly logic. It doesn’t take a history degree to know what happens when the truth tellers are told to stay silent while fascists and fanatics speak freely. This is a losing dynamic, and especially unacceptable when real women’s lives and futures are at stake.

As Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, has said:

Unbelievable as it may seem, in the 21st century there are still people—including people in positions of power and authority—who are determined to force women to bear children, regardless of the situation, the feelings, and the better judgment of those women themselves. That is a way of enslaving women to the dictates of an oppressive male supremacist, patriarchal system; and that is what the cruel fanatics who are determined to deny women the right to abortion are really all about.

This rotten system does not deserve to run its shit on people one day longer! Get with the revolution, and fight for a radically different society. Find out about that society here: Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

For more on the most radical revolution the world has ever seen, see Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution.

 

 

 

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