One year ago, a Christian fascist majority on the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—the nationwide right to abortion in place for nearly 50 years. Every day of this year has been a nightmare for countless numbers of women … and this has further oppressed, subordinated and degraded all women to the status of breeder and incubator.

It would take days to do justice to the full impact of this outrage, but what is clear is that this has terrorized the lives of millions, and that the fascists are not stopping until they end ALL abortion access across the country.

In the face of this, Democrats and the so-called “pro-choice” movement are disorienting and demobilizing the people who don’t want to see this future for women, and channeling the collective outrage into voting. In addition to the fact that voting is never how basic rights have been won, the fascists have said they will not accept results of elections they lose.

But the truth remains, as the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian said years ago about the oppression or liberation of women:

It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

Forced Motherhood Is Female Enslavement

There are over 22 million women of child-bearing age in states with total abortion bans, and millions more in states with severe restrictions. Think of these women’s lives and their futures, think of the hundreds of thousands of women who actually become pregnant, and what not having access to abortion means. If you follow this closely on social media or the news, you’ll hear a few stories a month about ectopic pregnancies, women being forced to carry non-viable fetuses to term just to have the baby die in their arms hours after birth, girls as young as 10 forced to travel across state lines for abortion, women developing sepsis (life-threatening infection) from self-managed abortions or miscarriages—but this is mainly happening in the shadows. Now think about the stories we never hear: women forced to bear a child they otherwise wouldn’t, teenagers, battered women, or just someone with life plans, forced into motherhood against their will—foreclosing their hopes and dreams.

One study estimated that there were 25,640 fewer abortions from July 2022 to March 2023 compared to the average monthly number of abortions in the two months before Roe was overturned. While this number does not account for women who accessed medication abortion through a non-official capacity, it does tell us something about the scale of this atrocity.¹

In addition to this terror, when abortion is illegal, women die. A study is projecting that the overturning of the right to abortion will cause 6 to 15 deaths per year, in addition to over 1,000 women facing life-threatening dangers in their unwanted pregnancies.² This does not count what might happen when women seek to do harm to themselves to induce an abortion.

Dystopian Post-Roe Reality

Terry was 21, going into her 15-week ultrasound with her 22-year-old boyfriend, Eric, in Austin, Texas. They thought they would be learning the gender of their baby but instead found out that the fetus had not developed at all above the neck. A one-in-a-million abnormality with no chance of survival, but a “heartbeat”³ was still present. The total abortion ban in Texas doesn't have an exception for fetal abnormalities and doesn't allow doctors to counsel their patients on the best way forward (in the law, this is considered “aiding and abetting” an abortion!). Because Terry was already in declining health due to the troubled pregnancy, the specialist risked a great deal by suggesting she get an abortion out of state. But Terry’s gynecologist was anti-abortion and gave different advice. Even though she was clear on the serious risks to Terry’s health, the doctor still pushed her to remain pregnant.

Terry said, “It felt like ‘does my life matter in this, or is this just about bringing a baby into the world for a moment’? It felt like my life didn’t matter, like I could just die and it would all be for nothing.”

A week later, the young couple traveled to New Mexico to get the abortion. They felt they couldn’t tell anyone or ask for help because of the laws in place that enable anyone to sue for assisting someone with an abortion. She said her father would try to talk her out of it—“I would get a lecture on how it's my motherly duty to bring my child into the world.” Months later, the couple still hasn't told any friends or family, which takes a toll on their daily lives.⁴

Bans, Confusion, Chaos

Texas isn’t the only state with a total abortion ban, and Terry is one of hundreds of thousands of women traversing this post-Roe hellscape.

Since the Supreme Court ruling, abortion has been completely banned in a total of 13 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia). Georgia has a six-week ban in effect, which is before most women know they are pregnant. There are 9 additional states in flux, with restrictions ranging from 6-week bans to 15- to 20-week bans.

On top of this, Republi-fascist–led states have moved to pass tougher abortion laws that restrict access to the procedure and impose punishments on doctors or women who have an abortion. In 2022 alone, state legislators introduced 563 provisions to restrict access to abortion, and 50 of those restrictions were signed into law the same year. To name a few:

• Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Carolina introduced bills that aim to charge women who get abortions with homicide. Alabama Republican Rep. Ernie Yarbrough argued, “Abortion is murder, and justice demands that our laws treat it as such.”
• Wyoming became the first state to outlaw abortion pills. Medication abortion providers could serve six months in prison under the law.
• Oklahoma and Idaho joined Texas in abortion bounty hunter laws. These are laws which allow anyone—a neighbor, coworker, anti-choice activist, or even a complete stranger from a different state—to sue someone for providing abortion care or helping a woman access care after about six weeks in a pregnancy, and be rewarded $10,000 or more if they win the suit. The pro-choice group NARAL reports that there are more than 15 states poised to copy this fascist—a law that would have been unconstitutional one short year ago, before the fascist court overturned Roe and arbitrarily removed constitutional protection for this basic right.
• Idaho went further and passed an “abortion trafficking” law in April, the first of its kind. This makes it illegal to obtain abortion pills for a minor or help them leave the state for an abortion.

Abortion Bans Taking a Toll on Women’s Health and Lives

Christine Zielke was 33 years old, living in DC. She had a miscarriage early in her pregnancy and chose to let the pregnancy tissue pass naturally rather than have it surgically removed. This is a process that could take weeks. While on a road trip to Ohio, she started bleeding. At the time, in Ohio, abortion was banned at six weeks. She bled through multiple sets of clothes, and when she got to her destination, she sat in the bathtub, filling the bottom with blood. She went to the ER and got an ultrasound, which found no fetal “heartbeat.” But the staff told her she hadn’t lost enough blood to be concerned even though she continued filling up diapers with blood.

She was discharged from the ER in Ohio without treatment for her miscarriage even though she'd been bleeding profusely for hours. The treatment Christine should’ve gotten was a D&C (dilation and curettage, a removal of fetal tissue and blood), but since it is the same procedure used in an abortion, many doctors are scared to perform it.

She continued to bleed at home for seven hours, and she got to the point where her eyes rolled backward and she went limp from dramatic loss of blood. Her family called for an ambulance to take her back to the ER, where she finally got the D&C.⁵

Christine’s story is not uncommon—tens of thousands of women have miscarriages every year, and many of them will require medical assistance.

Bankrupt “Pro-choice" Strategies of Capitulation Are All Played Out

Democrats and “pro-choice” leaders have camouflaged their capitulation to a post-Roe America—before and since Roe was overturned. They’ve insisted people’s energies be narrowly focused on funding abortion funds to help women travel to get abortions or, support underground networks to access abortion pills. While these services provide invaluable care to SOME women, as a strategy, this has proven disastrous—and cannot keep up with the many fronts of fascist assault.

• In the 100 days after Roe was overturned, 66 clinics across 15 states stopped offering abortions. Among the 66 clinics, 26 have shut down completely, leaving 14 states with no abortion provider.⁶
• Several states where women have traveled to access abortions in the past year have recently moved to ban abortions! Florida, which saw the largest increase in abortions over the last nine months, passed a six-week ban in April. North Carolina had seen thousands more women travel to the state seeking abortions, and they just passed a 12-week ban. These new bans will have devastating effects on women seeking abortion in the South.⁷
• Over half of all abortions use medication (vs. surgery). Immediately after Roe was overturned, a well-organized group of fascists began working to make these medications illegal—on a federal level. The way this case is being prosecuted could set a dangerous precedent for “protecting the pre-born.” This case is still going through the courts.

As more states pass abortion bans, helping women travel to access abortion care will become less of an option. Closed clinics mean open clinics become overloaded. Dramatic increases in caseloads mean clinic capacity and staff are stretched to their limits, resulting in longer wait times for appointments—which can often mean when women get an appointment, they are further along in their pregnancies.

But the larger danger is that the fascists—in and out of government—have said they are aiming for a federal ban on abortion. These piecemeal solutions pushed by the Democrats and the “pro-choice” movement—working within the margins of defeat—are a deadly strategy.

In addition to pacifying any real resistance—refusing to call people into the streets—some of these forces have also attacked the only force who dared to lead a fight in the streets against this fascist attack—Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, and the revcoms. They viciously slandered Sunsara Taylor, an initiator of Rise Up, and the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, who Sunsara follows. This contributed to the broad disorientation and demoralization in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, ultimately aiding this fascist assault and contributing to genocidal escalations on the rights and lives of LGBTQ people.⁸

Make Roe’s Reversal a Rallying Cry for Revolution

Legal, accessible abortion is the most basic right of women to be considered full human beings, and reversing this right is being used as a battering ram for fascism. With the overturning of the right to abortion last year, thousands of years of patriarchal chains have been dramatically tightened. This is a central concentration of the way this whole society is being ripped apart, with one section of the rulers moving to install a fascist America, and the other section of the rulers desperately working to restore the “norms” of this oppressive system. As dangerous as all this is, it also means that revolution—a real revolution—has become more possible.

Shaping up before us now are two fundamentally opposed futures: Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating. And this truth rings out now more powerfully than ever: Which future we get depends to a great extent on what we do.
– from the WE ARE THE REVCOMS proclamation

There is an untapped fury in the thousand and one ways in which women are downpressed, degraded, sexualized, and exploited, and now deemed as nothing more than an incubator. This can and must be a driving force of making a real revolution in this country.

What is needed and possible amidst all this madness is for the millions of people who are individually agonizing and suffering in silence, hoping against hope that things will somehow work out, to wake up, and get with this revolution.