In the next few months, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to issue a ruling that will gut or eliminate the Constitutional right to abortion. Such a ruling, when and if it is made, will jolt millions into a living nightmare. In just a few months, tens of millions of women and girls may be forced into a legally-mandated, less than fully human, caste. Breeding and incubation will be legally enforced as their defining contribution to, and role within, society. They will be subjected to control and torment of their most intimate functions and vital decisions by the government, church authorities, and patriarchal (male supremacist) family members.

A Woman-Hating Juggernaut Gathers Momentum

Last year Texas fascists passed a law that virtually outlaws abortion in the country’s second largest state, and mobilizes self-appointed vigilantes to enforce it. That law, which survived its last legal challenge on March 11, has become a template for fascists throughout the country. They have not only copied it, they are using it as a starting point for an outrageous, grotesque, and cruel escalation of assaults on abortion, as they prepare for the demise of Roe v. Wade (the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide) by pushing harshly punitive, woman-hating laws. Some recent examples:

• Idaho—On March 14, Idaho’s Senate passed a “copycat” version of the Texas law—and added a sinister twist. This law establishes a patriarchal right to prevent a woman from making her own choice on what to do about a pregnancy,  giving not only her family members but relatives of the male who impregnated the woman, the right to impose forced motherhood on her.

All of these people are given the right to sue an abortion provider for a minimum of $20,000 in damages, within four years of the procedure. A convicted rapist wouldn’t be able to file a lawsuit, but his relatives could.

• Missouri—Several hideously punitive anti-abortion laws are making their way through the Missouri legislature. One is a combination of bounty-hunting and a modern Fugitive Slave Law¹—except in this case it could be called a Fugitive Woman Law. It allows fascist vigilantes (aka “private citizens”) in Missouri to sue anyone who helps a resident of Missouri get a legal abortion in another state. This means that the right to travel outside of a state that has outlawed or limited access to abortion will be foreclosed, when providers or others helping her travel can be sued. Another measure under consideration would outlaw producing or prescribing devices or drugs used in abortions, and make that punishable with a prison sentence of 5 to 15 years.

The same bill would punish doctors and medical staff who perform an operation on a woman with an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy is one that develops outside a woman’s uterus, often in the fallopian tubes. This measure will literally kill women if it becomes law. “An ectopic pregnancy can be fatal for the pregnant person without prompt intervention. The fallopian tube, for example, may burst, leading to shock and serious blood loss. Swift treatment is crucial. It cannot, however, preserve the embryo.” (from MedicalNewsToday.com) In the proposed Missouri law, a doctor could be charged with a Class A felony, which carries a minimum of 10 years in prison and a maximum of life, if an abortion is “performed or induced or was attempted to be performed or induced on a woman who has an ectopic pregnancy.”

• Oklahoma—On March 10, the Oklahoma Senate passed six viciously anti-abortion bills. One outlaws all abortions 30 days after a woman’s last period, which is more or less just two weeks pregnant, well before most women know they are pregnant. Others include: A Texas-style law that will eliminate “virtually all abortion services in the state”; a new “trigger ban that would allow pre-Roe laws to take effect if the Supreme Court overturns it”; two amendments of the Oklahoma Constitution, one eliminating any right to abortion in Oklahoma, the other conferring “full personhood”—and the legal rights that come with it—upon embryos and fetuses, from conception. This means that the woman in whose body this fetus is growing, would have fewer rights than the cells growing from the fertilized egg,  from that moment.
• The state also will fund fake clinics that claim to be abortion clinics. The Christian fascist president of Oklahoma’s senate issued a statement praising these horrific measures and declaring his hope that Roe will soon be overturned: “It is my sincere hope federal legal precedents allowing abortion are overturned, restoring Oklahoma’s ability to prohibit abortion once again. Until that welcomed day, I will continue to lead the Oklahoma Senate to enact measures to save the lives of the unborn.”

A Defining Moment

• These are just some of the more than 230 anti-abortion measures filed in 39 states in the first two months of this year alone.  All of these laws aim to implement forced motherhood which is female enslavement.  They codify into law the domination of the state, and individual males, over individual women.

The subjugation of women concentrated in these measures is a cornerstone of the fully fascist society many Protestant Christian fundamentalists, right-wing Catholics, white supremacists, the Republican Party, and straight-up Nazis are aggressively moving towards, and fully intend to install in the entire country.

Most people do not know that this is what is happening, and what it will mean for every woman and girl. But when people learn the scope of this, and how vicious this aggressive attempt to knock women back is, then there is the potential for the anger and outrage to become a powerful force for radical change.

As Bob Avakian says in “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap for That Revolution”:

Here is another profound truth: Even with all the ways that the heavy chains of hundreds, and thousands, of years of oppressive tradition weigh down on the masses of people—and place a heavy burden particularly on the half of humanity that is female—there is a deep yearning to be free of all this, which not only leads to imaginary hopes of supernatural salvation but also erupts in unrestrained fury right in this real world. And that fury needs to be fully called forth, given a scientific, revolutionary expression—focused toward the emancipation of all the oppressed and exploited of the world, and ultimately all humanity—directed to fighting against the fundamental source of all the suffering: this system of capitalism-imperialism, with its suffocating and brutal, patriarchal male supremacy, along with all its other outrages. This takes on even more powerful meaning and urgent importance in the current situation in this country (and others), where the forceful assertion of raw misogyny (hatred of women) and patriarchal subjugation of women is becoming more blatant and unbridled, focused to a significant degree now in the escalating moves to even further deny women control over their own lives and their very bodies, with the right to abortion, and even birth control, being brought under mounting attack. Right now, this slogan and call needs to be taken up broadly and made a powerful material force: Break the Chains, Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!

At this crucial moment, when the question of what future for everyone is sharply posed, an outpouring to drive back and defeat this attempt to crush women’s lives and spirits is what is urgently needed, and if that happens on the scale that shakes up all of society, this will bring a big change in the political situation in this country. People will feel the strength of defiance, of standing up—not the deadening defeatism that hangs over people today.  And with this a different vision, of an emancipating future, can come more sharply into focus.

Bob Avakian has repeatedly and deeply analyzed that the norms which have held this country together for so long— like the right to abortion—are being torn apart. As he wrote in  “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating …”:

The crisis and deep divisions in society can only be resolved through radical means, of one kind or another—either radically reactionary, murderously oppressive and destructive means or radically emancipating revolutionary means.

With all this, what is urgently needed, what is possible—and what must be actively, tirelessly worked for, in order for there to truly be a positive outcome to all this—is a fundamentally different alignment in the country as a whole: a Repolarization that is favorable for, and brings forward the necessary forces for, Revolution—a real revolution to overthrow this system, and bring into being a radically different and much better system.

The fight to defeat the fascist assault on the right to abortion is one of the defining battles that will contribute greatly to shaping which of these possible futures comes to pass.