1. Why is the right to abortion essential to women being full human beings and full participants in society?

Bob Avakian has said that, “The attack on the right to abortion is a move to further intensify the already horrific oppression of women, denying them control of their lives and their very bodies, reducing them to breeders of children, cruelly subordinated to men and a patriarchal male-supremacist society. Forced motherhood is in fact female enslavement.”

Imagine being 18 years old, with dreams of becoming a soccer player, or going to law school or traveling the world, and you find out you’re pregnant from someone you barely knew.

Imagine you’re in an abusive relationship and discover that you’re pregnant...

Imagine being a 13-year-old, raped by her cousin or uncle or father...

Or imagine you find out you’re pregnant and you just don’t want to be…

Having access to safe legal abortion is what you need to reclaim control of your life and your dreams.

Now, imagine NOT having access to abortion. And even more than that, imagine abortion is outlawed, and the police, courts, and prisons are organized to FORCE you to bear the child. Where you don’t even have the CHOICE about when, or if, you will be a mother; where the threat of forced motherhood hangs over ALL women; where women are reduced to nothing more than baby-making machines, and this sub-human status is written into law.

THIS is what’s at stake right now with the Supreme Court deciding whether to overturn Roe v, Wade and get rid of the right to abortion this spring. There is a ticking bomb of female enslavement. Are we gonna jolt society awake and rise up to stop this? Or let it explode?

Take to the streets March 8, International Women’s Day! Abortion on demand and without apology! RiseUp4AbortionRights.org

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2. If I’m in New York or California, or another “blue state,” will abortion be safe?

You don’t understand what we’re up against. The anti-abortion movement are Christian fascists who want to impose a Handmaid’s Tale future where the Bible is the law of the land. These people have murdered abortion doctors and burned down Planned Parenthood clinics. They terrorize women entering abortion clinics, telling them to submit to their husbands. They will not be satisfied with some states having abortion and some not. They want to outlaw it altogether and punish women if they break the law. Then they’re coming for birth control, divorce, and anyone who doesn’t conform to their “traditional” gender roles.

Plus, how fucked up and morally bankrupt is it to just abandon our sisters in the “red states”?! This whole idea of just looking out for yourself while the fascists keep targeting one group after another, just helps the fascists.

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3. Anti-abortion judges control the Supreme Court. Isn’t Roe v. Wade done no matter what we do?

Think outside the box! How do you think abortion rights were won in the first place in 1973? Do you think this would’ve happened without the fierce struggle of women and others in the streets—all taking place during a time of huge economic, social and political upheaval and tumultuous change? And while the character of things is very different today, there is certainly no less upheaval! No way!

It’s not actually a foregone conclusion how the Supreme Court will rule. They haven’t issued their decision yet—and how we act in the meantime matters greatly. Whether or not there’s a mass outpouring of protest from every part of society, like we did after the murder of George Floyd, will affect what these fascist justices feel they can and cannot get away with. 

This is a fight that we could actually win. There’s no guarantees—but what IS guaranteed is that if we DON’T fight, the Christian fascist steamroller will keep steamrolling, and moving even faster with fewer obstacles.

True—all reforms are never fully and finally won so long as this system of capitalism-imperialism, which is knit with a thousand binding threads to male domination, is still in effect. That’s one big reason people need to get with the revcoms and get into revolution. But we’ll never get to make a revolution if we let ourselves be ground down.

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4. I’m pro-choice, I’m with you already.

Right now, as the Supreme Court moves to rip up away abortion rights… If you will NOT fight against forced motherhood, then you ARE choosing the enslavement of women.

Think about it: If you were back in the 1950s/60s, was it enough to just be “against” Jim Crow? No, you had to get out in the streets and put something on the line!

And that means being in the streets with RiseUp4AbortionRights.org on March 8, and in the days after.

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5. If abortion pills are legal isn’t that good enough?

Get real! Abortion pills only work early in the pregnancy and can only reach a fraction of the people who need abortions. And wake up! These anti-abortion fascists are NOT going to stop with overturning Roe v. Wade. Their explicit aim is to make abortion—and birth control—illegal and inaccessible EVERYWHERE. Some states are already moving to pass laws banning abortion pills. Comforting yourself with this illusion just aids the fascists. 

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6. Shouldn’t we be focused on helping women NOW, by busing them to states where abortion is still legal, donating to abortion funds, etc?

No, we should be focused on raising hell to STOP the Supreme Court from overturning abortion rights! Imagine if people were aiming to literally re-enslave Black people, and rather than fighting to prevent that from happening, some people said we should focus on helping a few people to freedom on the underground railroad! Why would you set your sights that low while we still have a fighting chance?!

There’s a terrible legacy of this: As the Nazis made life worse and worse for Jews, many Jewish organizations tried to “stay positive” and focus on trying to help individual Jews “survive,” rather than sounding the alarm about what was happening and organizing people to fight. They worked WITHIN the terms set by the Nazis, as these terms became worse and worse, acting as if fascism can be ducked and dodged, lived with and accepted. Let’s learn from history, not repeat it. The Christian fascists in the U.S. are aiming to outlaw abortion EVERYWHERE. Already in Texas they have made it a crime to “aid and abet” a woman getting an abortion. 

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7. Why are you so angry? Doesn’t that make you like the Trumpers?

Why aren’t YOU angry?! Seriously, if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention. And no, that doesn’t make us like the fascists at all. They’re fighting to enslave women. We’re fighting for liberation. The problem right now is that these fascists are the ones who are full of passion and certitude to fight for their program, while all too many “pro-choice” people are going along with this and afraid to rock the boat.

Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!

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8. Taking away abortion rights is bad, but isn’t it too extreme to say “Forced motherhood is female enslavement”? Doesn’t that diminish what Black people went through in the U.S.?

What do you call it when a person has no control over her own body and reproduction? When women are violently FORCED BY THE STATE to bear children against their will? Is this not a form of enslavement?

Of course it is not identical to chattel slavery. Women are not being forced to pick cotton from sunup to sundown, generation after generation, whipped when they don’t do enough. They are not having their children sold. These were horrors which everyone needs to deeply understand. But this IS a form of slavery, in the most intimate way!

And let’s not forget that one of the main forms that U.S. slavery took, especially after the Atlantic slave trade was mostly ended in 1808, was the systematic rape and "breeding" of slaves! And if you want to talk about literal slavery in the world today, one of the main forms of that is the enslavement of millions of women and girls in sexual slavery. Does acknowledging this fact diminish what has happened to Black people in the U.S.? Of course not.

At a time when the future of half of humanity that is female is in the balance, stop playing "oppression Olympics" and squabbling about who “owns” oppression and who has a “right to speak.” Right now EVERYONE needs to be raising their voices and taking to the streets against the ferocious fascist assault on abortion rights aiming to slam women back to being property of men and breeders of children.

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9. But what about the fetus?

What about the fetus?  A fetus within a woman’s body has the potential to be a child, but is totally dependent on the woman’s body at every stage for its very survival. A fetus is NOT a child—it is not a person who lives, breathes, and thinks on its own. 

Is it true that a fetus is a form of life? Of course it is. It is made up of live cells, it is growing and processing energy, it has the capacity to mature and reproduce, it has a genetic system and so on.

Will an abortion destroy this form of life? Yes, absolutely.

Well then, isn’t an abortion killing another human being? No, absolutely not.

A fetus is not yet a human being. It is more like a seed or a sprout of a human being. It is "alive," but that is also true of all the other cells in a woman’s body. It has no life of its own yet. It is not yet a separate life from the life of the woman in whose uterus it is.

Go here for more on this.

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10. Is talking about abortion rights for women exclusionary of trans and nonbinary people? Shouldn’t we say “pregnant people” or “people with uteruses” instead?

Bob Avakian spoke to this best:

The essential question at stake with the escalating attack on the right to abortion is the fundamental status of the half of humanity that is female—whether they will be enslaved or emancipated. Of course, in the case of the extremely small number of females who have transitioned (or are transitioning) to males but who retain female reproductive organs and might get pregnant, they should have the right to abortion, and to decent health care overall, without any stigma or discrimination—and in general attacks directed against trans people must be actively, vigorously opposed. But, in terms of its essential purpose and objective, the attack on the right to abortion is not aimed at trans people. The essence of what is involved is not “inclusion” (or the lack of “inclusion”), nor is this about “bodily autonomy” in some general and abstract sense (a concept which, by the way, would logically include people coming from a very bad place, such as those anti-scientific lunatics and selfish individualists who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID).  The attack on the right to abortion is a move to further intensify the already horrific oppression of women, denying them control of their lives and their very bodies, reducing them to breeders of children, cruelly subordinated to men and a patriarchal male-supremacist society. Forced motherhood is in fact female enslavement. Anything which waters down or distracts from this essential truth is objectively aiding this fundamental attack on the half of humanity that is female—is undermining the fight for their emancipation, and the emancipation of humanity as a whole from any form of oppression and exploitation.

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11. Abortion is a “white woman’s issue.”

Bullshit. First of all, poor women and women of color are the ones hit hardest by abortion restrictions. And why the hell should we let ANY women be denied the right to control their body?! Instead of making excuses to sit on the sidelines, and dividing people by identity, now’s the time to unite everyone who can stop this attack on half of humanity!

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12. Why are the revcoms part of this fight?

The revcoms are about breaking ALL the chains binding people, ending ALL forms of oppression and exploitation. And the oppression of women is one of the biggest and heaviest chains—on HALF OF HUMANITY. Bob Avakian, revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, has emphasized that the fight for the full liberation of women is central—not only in making revolution, but in making sure that it is all-the-way revolution.

If we don’t defeat this assault, if the fascists keep steamrolling and people keep accepting it, it’ll be a nightmare and it’ll reinforce people’s sense of powerlessness and despair, making it much more difficult to rise up for anything better. But if we DO rouse people out of their slumber to rise up and defeat this, we will have brought forward millions of people who have stood up and have a sense of their own power, who are much more open to questioning, to dreaming and daring. And the revcoms intend to be in this mix, fighting to win people to a revolutionary understanding and organize them into the movement to overthrow the system that enforces these chains and has given rise to these fanatical fascist woman-haters, and put humanity on the road to real emancipation.

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