Letter from Prisoner:
Defending the Right to Abortion, and Transforming People for Revolution
April 14, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On April 2, the Alabama State Senate approved an anti-abortion bill that is expected to be signed into law by the governor and could lead to the forced closing of the state's four remaining abortion clinics. The bill—deceptively named "The Women's Health and Safety Act"—would require clinics to widen rooms and doorways, forcing clinics to undergo remodeling and putting a big financial burden on them. The bill also requires physicians working at the clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals, making it much more difficult for the clinics to have qualified doctors on staff. These measures have nothing to do with actually protecting the health and safety of women, but are aimed at shutting down clinics and making abortion even harder to get. The Alabama bill is a part of a flood of anti-abortion laws across the U.S. at the state level (see "North Dakota Governor Signs Three Extreme Anti-Abortion Laws" in Revolution, April 7, 2012). The stark reality is that abortion is increasingly stigmatized, dangerous to provide, and difficult to access. Unavailability of abortion poses real dangers to health and safety of women. And if women are forced to continue with unwanted pregnancies, their lives are foreclosed and degraded.
The following is a letter from a prisoner about defending the right to abortion.
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P.R.L.F. Volunteers
First and foremost I want to thank you all for continuing my subsidized subscription of Revolution, I have received all of the latest issues, as well as those issues that were sent to me before my new mailing information was on your records. The other prison forwarded all of my mail, so I received every issue that's been distributed this year, and last week a copy of the Constitution of the R.C.P., U.S.A. along with a piece by Sunsara Taylor arrived as well. I read the piece written by Sunsara Taylor the night it arrived, but I haven't read the Constitution yet.
I have the piece by Sunsara Taylor sitting here before me, and I personally consider this to be a very valuable piece because it relates to the struggles I face in here as far as trying to get others to Engage In BA's work, and to see "Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right".
There is No uniformal way to taking this New Synthesis to the streets and trying to reach the masses, and Sunsara Taylor demonstrates this in her piece ("A Powerful Day of Defiance: No More Trayvon Martins, Revolution—Nothing Less!"). In BAsics 5:24 B.A. says: "We must be able to maintain our firmness of principles but at the same time our flexibility.... " which is key, especially when dealing with closed minded individuals who are so delusional, and who are so grounded in BullShit, It doesn't matter what approach is taken because they are going to remain convicted in what they believe to be true.
For instance, after reading one of the recent issues of Revolution geared toward the abolishment of patriarchism, and promoting Abortion on Demand, this brother came up to me and said He feels that line to be morally Incorrect. He says he feels this way not only because he's a Christian, but the fact that a potential life is being murdered doesn't sit well with him. He said that a woman should be more responsible and keep her legs closed if she doesn't want to have a baby.... Now, at this point I really want to go upside his HEAD. I actually felt a slight rage come over my entire body..... keeping my cool, and being flexible, I kindly ask the brother if he at least felt that a woman should have the right to choose to terminate their pregnancy or not? He said yes, that they should have a choice. I told him that the choice to decide is being taken away due to the action of backward thinking people. I told him how the access to abortion clinics and forms of birth control Is being taken away. I then gave him a book by Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: Evidence of Evolution, bookmarking a chapter in the book titled: "You did it yourself in nine months," showing that an embryo is not a baby and in fact there are several stages that an egg must develop through before becoming an actual baby.
There is definitely no short cuts to becoming informed, and my moral obligation is to see that we all know the truth, which is obtained by gathering the facts. This brother says he read the chapter, but on account of his morals he's standing on his position. He has the mentality that if he is wrong, then he doesn't want to be Right. While I appreciate his enthusiasm for saving lives, women are Not human Incubators. And since he is so hellbent on saving the potential lives of seeds, then may be he should consider the potential life he is destroying while he masturbates to those pornographic photos he's always looking for. (feel me)
Transforming the people for Revolution is not an easy task, and I applaud Sunsara Taylor and the rest for taking the Revolution to the streets... With this letter I'm enclosing an essay that my daughter wrote for her freshman English class [see "Prisoner's Daughter Writes on Devastating Effects of Mass Incarceration"]. It really moved me in such a way, and I told her that I would be sharing this with the P.R.L.F, because if it were not for the work that y'all do this essay would have never been written with this content. Thanks for Everything.
—Struggle
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