Federal Court Gives Green Light to Extreme Anti-Abortion Law in Texas
This Must Be Opposed Right Now!
October 6, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From readers:
On October 2, a three-judge panel of a U.S. appeals court threw out another judge's ruling that had blocked the State of Texas from enforcing an unjust and immoral anti-abortion law. As an immediate result, 13 abortion clinics in Texas were forced to stop providing abortions. The 5.5 million women in Texas of reproductive age now have only eight clinics left performing abortions—all in Houston, Austin, and two other metropolitan regions. No clinics will be providing abortions west or south of San Antonio.
Emergency demonstrations were held in four cities against the October 2 appeals court ruling that forced 13 clinics to stop providing abortions. Here, Berkeley California demonstration. Photo: special to revcom.us.
This means even greater numbers of women in vast areas of Texas will be forced to bear children against their will—leading to destroyed lives, shattering of plans and dreams, and enforcement of a status of incubators on human beings. Others will die from attempts at illegal abortions. And a horrible precedent has been set—the right to abortion nationwide hangs by an even slimmer thread. The implications are stunning and horrific—and MUST BE OPPOSED RIGHT NOW!
The basis of the federal court's ruling was obscene. The judges decided that their ruling—which will affect huge areas of Texas—does not deprive a "large fraction" of women of their constitutional right to abortion. They said they based this reasoning on the data provided by an "expert" for the State of Texas who claimed that one out of six Texas women seeking an abortion lives more than 150 miles from the nearest clinic. The court basically ruled that these people don't count. But these women are human beings who, in many, many cases, are now prevented from having access to an abortion. This is like saying slavery wasn't so bad because only one-sixth of all people were enslaved. And the one-sixth is understated.
Who do you think these "non-people"—in the eyes of the court—are? Some are desperately poor immigrant women in South Texas who might have been raped on the perilous journey to the U.S. Some are young women in abusive or incestuous situations forced, on top of everything else, to bear a child against their will. Some are poor women who can't afford the expense of a long trip for what should be a routine medical procedure. Some are women who will attempt to self-abort, with horrible consequences. This is not tolerable!
Take note that one of the judges in the appeals court panel, who concurred with at least part of this reactionary ruling, was appointed by Barack Obama. This is a tragic and terrible example of the vicious harm posed by relying on the Democratic Party in any way, shape, or form.
The court's ruling is a shameful violation of rights supposedly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court's earlier rulings on abortion—and of supposed constitutional guarantees of equal protection for everyone. It must be reversed!
StopPatriarchy immediately called for protests after the ruling, and there were defiant actions in response to the call in New York City, Seattle, and Berkeley as well as a protest in Austin that revolutionaries joined. And these latest developments underscore the importance of the plans for the January anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, to be marked by major protests raising the just demand: Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!
Two OPPOSITE Constitutions and the Right to Abortion
The U.S. Constitution—when it is upheld or when it is (often) simply ignored when that serves the interests of the rulers of this country—has always been a document that serves enforcing, not overthrowing, oppression. And that includes the ages-old oppression of women.
In contrast, the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) IS a plan for a truly liberating society.
The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) from the RCP is written with the future in mind. It is intended to set forth a basic model, and fundamental principles and guidelines, for the nature and functioning of a vastly different society and government than now exists: the New Socialist Republic in North America, a socialist state which would embody, institutionalize and promote radically different relations and values among people; a socialist state whose final and fundamental aim would be to achieve, together with the revolutionary struggle throughout the world, the emancipation of humanity as a whole and the opening of a whole new epoch in human history–communism–with the final abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise.
Read the entire Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) from the RCP at revcom.us/rcp.
And here's what it says about the right to abortion and other basic rights and liberties, as part of eradicating women's oppression overall:
Section 3. Eradicating the Oppression of Women.
1. The oppression of women emerged thousands of years ago in human history together with the splitting of society into exploiting and exploited classes, and this oppression is one of the cornerstones of all societies based on exploitation. For the same reason, the struggle to finally and fully uproot the oppression of women is of profound importance and will be a decisive driving force in carrying forward the revolution toward the final goal of communism, and the eradication of all exploitation and oppression, throughout the world. Based on this understanding, the New Socialist Republic in North America gives the highest priority not only to establishing and giving practical effect to full legal equality for women—and to basic rights and liberties that are essential for the emancipation of women, such as reproductive freedom, including the right to abortion as well as birth control—but also to the increasing, and increasingly unfettered, involvement of women, equally with men, in every sphere of society, and to propagating and popularizing the need for and importance of uprooting and overcoming all remaining expressions and manifestations of patriarchy and male supremacy, in the economic and social relations and in the realms of politics, ideology and culture, and to promote the objective of fully emancipating women and the pivotal role of the struggle for this emancipation in the overall transformation of this society and the world as a whole. This orientation, and policies and laws flowing from it, shall be applied, promoted, encouraged and supported with the full political, legal and moral force, authority and influence of the government, at all levels, in the New Socialist Republic in North America.
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