Emergency in Texas!

Join with the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride: Ground Zero Texas

June 16, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Texas is the second most populous state in the country with more than 26 million people. In 2011, Texas had 46 freestanding abortion clinics. By September, it could have as few as six left!

This is an emergency. When women cannot access safe and affordable abortion, their lives are foreclosed by forced motherhood. Or they are driven to risk their lives by seeking illegal abortions. Before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in 1973, it is estimated that thousands of women died each year from botched illegal abortions. Already, especially in the Rio Grande Valley near the U.S.-Mexico border, where there is a high concentration of poor and immigrant women, women are resorting to desperate and dangerous measures to self-induce abortions.

On August 4, in Austin, Texas, a trial begins in a lawsuit that challenges one part of the law House Bill 2 (HB2) that has driven these clinic closures. The law's requirement that abortion clinics meet the same standards as Ambulatory Surgery Centers is medically completely unnecessary and—like the other parts of HB2—was designed to shut down clinics. If this lawsuit is unsuccessful, this law could close all but six remaining abortion clinics in Texas on September 1.

This must not be allowed!

NOW is the time for mass public outpourings of resistance. Through massive resistance, we must create a political situation where the courts and politicians fear that any negative ruling will not only inflame resistance, defiance, and protest, but will also call into question the very legitimacy of a system that would force women to have children against their will. Look at how the right to abortion was won in the first place.

At stake is not just the future for Texas women, but for women across this country.

What is happening in Texas is just the front end of a battering ram against women's right to abortion nationwide. Hundreds of anti-abortion restrictions have been passed at the state level in the last three years. Dozens and dozens of clinics have been forced to close—in Alabama, Arizona, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio and beyond. The last abortion clinic in Mississippi remains open only because of a temporary ruling from a judge. The political and legal precedent in Texas will influence the course of similar laws in other states.

Join with Stop Patriarchy (End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women) this summer for the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride: Ground Zero Texas!

August 1 into September, volunteers from around the country will travel to Texas to stand up against these attacks: building mass protest and resistance, staging determined acts of resistance, confronting the anti-abortion forces and institutions, and caravanning down to the Rio Grande Valley. More plans to be announced soon. Volunteers needed now.

Contact: StopPatriarchy(at)gmail.com

Go to: StopPatriarchy.org

 

ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY!
FORCED MOTHERHOOD IS FEMALE ENSLAVEMENT!
DEFEAT THE WAR ON WOMEN!

 

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.