The U.S. Supreme Court will very soon be issuing a decision on an abortion case that by all indications is poised to reverse or gut Roe v. Wade. This is a moment when everyone who believes that women and girls are full human beings—not incubators—needs to be acting to prevent a great horror. But a new statement by a coalition of Reproductive Rights activists—“Abortion Within Reach”—is instead a case of capitulation masquerading as woke militancy.

Before you go further in reading this article, read the “Abortion Within Reach” statement.

Now, if you want to know what is wrong with the statement—look for what is never mentioned. Women. Male supremacy. Patriarchy. Even the Supreme Court isn’t mentioned. Why?

Erasing Women in the Name of Inclusivity

The absence of any mention of women, male supremacy, or patriarchy is not incidental. There has been a growing conscious insistence among the “woke” that to talk about women in relation to abortion is to “exclude” trans and non-binary people. Their logic begins with a kernel of truth: There are some people who do not identify as women (for example, some trans men) who still need abortions. However, the “woke” crowd seizes on this truth to make an unfounded leap by then proclaiming that to speak about abortion as a fundamental right of women is somehow to “erase” or “exclude” trans men.

But, as Bob Avakian, revolutionary leader and author of the new communism states, has sharply pointed out in a piece called, “The Fight for Abortion Rights and the Emancipation of Women”:

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.

One in four women in the U.S. has an abortion in her lifetime. Without this right, women are forced to become mothers against their will. This often means being tied to abusive relationships and even more abuse in a society where men legally have power over you. It always means the wrenching away of your own humanity as you are forced to submit control over your life to men and the state. College, work, travel, life—all are subordinated to being a forced breeder. It means dangerous attempts to self-abort that result in injury and death—high school and middle school students terrified, alone, denied education about sex and reproduction, driven to hurting themselves to try to decide their own futures. Forced motherhood is female enslavement. It is a fucking nightmare that no one should accept.

If the Supreme Court does overturn Roe, the day after it’s overturned, tens of millions of women will lose the right to abortion in the states in which they live and we will be on the road to federal laws forbidding abortion everywhere. Either the outrage of millions of women and men is mobilized in relentless resistance to stop this—or women and differently gendered people's rights will be stripped away and people forced to live in a future that is a horror. This is how urgent it is.

You can speak in gender-neutral terms all you want, but gender and the forced submission of one gender (women) to another (men) is precisely what the battle for abortion is over.  Does the struggle to stop this need to be inclusive of trans people who need abortions? Of course it does. But that is not the central question in this instance. The attack on abortion is the cutting edge of a drive to subordinate and enslave women.

Evading what is driving this assault on abortion contributes to it.

The “Abortion Within Reach” statement is entering the fray as this country is splitting apart. For decades a fanatical Christian fascist movement has used abortion as a battering ram to slam women back to their “God-given” role—where, to quote 1 Corinthians 11:13: “Man was not created for woman but woman for man” and a wife is obedient to her husband. This fanatical theocratic movement is no longer at the fringes of society but at the center of a Republican Party which is now a fully fascist party—and now a majority in the Supreme Court. This whole intensifying assault on women is a central part of what Bob Avakian has analyzed: “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.”

The “Abortion Within Reach” statement covers over what the danger is and directs people away from the real struggle that needs to be waged. This substituting of “word-changing” for actually fighting is contributing to and furthering the ability of the fascists to carry out their male-supremacist, white-supremacist and America uber alles objectives.

Capitulation to Overturning the Right to Abortion Before the Fact

Now go back and look again at that “Abortion Within Reach” statement. They demand many things. But why is there no demand that the Court uphold Roe? Because like the Democrats and mainstream reproductive rights organizations, these “woke folk” abortion activists have accepted in advance a “post-Roe” world. Contrast this to the Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights statement issued by a different coalition this month: “NOW is the time to hold nothing back. NOW is the time to rouse thousands and soon millions in struggle so that we can look every woman and girl in the eye with the promise in word and deed that they will have a future as full human beings. NOW is the time to stand up, together, as if our lives depend upon it—for, in fact, they do.”

Raise Your Sights to Ending Oppression

The capitulationism of the “Abortion Within Reach” statement is the outlook of people looking to keep and maintain their position within the confines of this oppressive system—of being so enslaved to it that they’re willing to accommodate, justify and now erase the enslavement of women.

As Bob Avakian has sharply identified and called out in his new work “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating”: “[I]s the deeper problem that these ‘progressive’ and ‘woke’ people have just given up on, or never really thought about, working for change that would actually lead to ending oppression?”

The oppression of women CAN in fact be ended, but not under this system. The fact that “Abortion Within Reach” is leading people to capitulate is all the more criminal because there is now a chance to do away with the whole capitalist-imperialist system that requires and regenerates the oppression of women that has existed for thousands of years of class divided societies. As unlikely as it may seem given the intensity of the Republi-fascist offensive, ironically it is precisely that severity that gives us that chance. The sharp divide and clash at the top of this society and all the way through it is ripping up the norms in a way that is both a tremendous danger but also holds the opening for a real revolution to overthrow this whole system. A revolution that would liberate at long last the half of society that has been subjugated is crucial to and a driving force for emancipating all humanity.

The outrageous attack on abortion—the invasion of the most fundamental rights and personhood of tens of millions of women that is in the offing—is one sharp concentration of that kind of disruption. We revcoms see that we will have to go up against and defeat these fascists as part of making a real revolution and an emancipating resolution to the deepening divide. And as part of that, we are wholeheartedly uniting with people from many viewpoints  to beat back this decision—taking inspiration from the uprisings of women all over the world. Let’s rise up with courage and conviction to defeat this assault while bringing closer a future where women and all people are free.