Responding to the Abortion Rights Emergency and Debating the Way Forward, reflections from a panel at Brooklyn College
By Sunsara Taylor | January 31, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Saturday, January 25, about thirty people faced bitter cold to gather at Brooklyn College for a panel discussion about the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and overcoming the challenges facing women's right to abortion, sponsored by the Brooklyn/Queens chapter of the National Organization for Women.
I was very happy to be included on the panel along with Jessica Atrio (Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health), Kelly Baden (Center for Reproductive Rights), Emily Kadar (Government Affairs Manager for NARAL Pro-Choice New York), Zenaida Mendez (President, NOW-New York State), and Annie Tummino (National Women's Liberation).
During the course of both the presentations and the discussion that followed, many important issues were raised and questions were explored. Taken together, the panelists painted a compelling picture of how acute the state of emergency facing women's right to abortion is: record numbers of restrictions in the past three years nationwide, very ominous trends in the courts, incredible stigmatization of abortion, and increasing difficulty accessing abortion for women in huge parts of the country.
There was also a great deal of divergence among us on the panel as to how to understand what is driving this war on women's right to abortion and how it must be fought.
The panelists from NOW and from NARAL both placed tremendous emphasis on an effort in the New York state assembly last year to pass a Women's Equality Act that included a guarantee of women's right to abortion in NY state (thus enabling women to get abortions after 24 weeks if their health required it and protecting abortion rights if Roe were overturned). A coalition of women's groups put tremendous efforts into getting this passed last year, but at the last minute a break-away faction of four Democrats sided with Republicans to defeat the act. Much of the focus of these two panelists was complaining about their frustration and sense of betrayal that these Democrats "didn't represent the will of their constituents." The NARAL panelist shared how their polling showed that 2/3 of New Yorkers supported the act. They insisted on the need to "hold these politicians accountable" and there was a pull in the room to focus in on whether the four "break-away Democrats" could be voted out in the next election and other ideas of how to get this Act back on track to be passed not this year (which everyone agreed was not realistic), but perhaps next year.
I argued that this whole approach of funnelling people's energies into supporting one or another politician, and hoping and or trying to pressure them to "do the right thing," leaves people passive, atomized and with no recourse but to try even more vigorously to pour their energies into these same dead-end channels once again when they are betrayed. Across the country the legislatures and the courts are increasingly hostile to abortion rights not because we haven't done enough polls showing the support for abortion rights, but because there is a deeply entrenched war on women driven by the workings of this patriarchal system as it goes through major challenges in the world and in this country and because people who oppose this haven't taken it upon themselves to go out into the streets and in other ways to massively resist this ourselves. It is precisely because so many pro-choice people are wrongly convinced that the only thing they can do is vote and lobby politicians that this dynamic has allowed this assault to make such headway.
Instead, we need to make a revolution to get rid of this system and its many other crimes, from mass incarceration to the wars for empire to the destruction of the environment and more (it was a positive part of the day that both Zenaida Mendez from NOW and Annie Tummino from National Women's Liberation spoke up about some of these broader crimes of the system). I held up A Declaration: For the Liberation of Women and Emancipation of Humanity and referenced the work Bob Avakian (BA) has done to develop a new synthesis of communism, and that this is given expression in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America which people should get into. I argued that right now, as part of building up the strength to make a revolution and transforming the people for revolution, and as the only means to defeat this war on women and reverse the trajectory in this country, we need people to go into the streets to wage massive independent political resistance outside the official channels of this system (the elections, the courts, the legislatures) and in opposition to the political and moral terms set by those channels (raising the slogan Abortion On Demand and Without Apology, not seeking "common ground").
In this way, the demands of the people will be heard and felt throughout society no matter what any individual politician, or whole section of the ruling class, does or does not do. People will get a sense of their own collective strength, they will influence the thinking of others and call them forward into active resistance as well. In this way we can lift people's sights, open up the deeper questions of what it will take to fully liberate women, open up big debates about revolution and communism vs. reform. In this way, we can create conditions where the divisions among the rulers are intensified and where they have to calculate—and fight over—whether to back off some of their most vicious attacks on women or risk driving even greater sections of the people into political revolt against them.
Both Mendez from NOW and Tummino from NWL picked up on this in their own ways. While neither of them advocated for revolution and what both of them argued still largely fell into what I describe below as "pressure politics," they each brought out important truths. Mendez spoke powerfully about the fact that it was only through going into the streets that advances were won in the civil rights struggles or the LGBT struggles or the fight for the liberation of women in the '60s and since. Tummino spoke about how the women's liberation movement was fighting for a repeal to all abortion laws during the early '70s and it was only by getting out, doing speakouts and defying the stigma and norms of society around abortion that the powers felt the need to grant some concessions.
A bit later a young woman from the audience asked if there was a proven correlation between people going into the streets in protest and actually winning reforms. Kelly Baden from CRR and Emily Kadar from NARAL put their arms around all these different "tactics" and argued that it is important to fight on many different fronts and have these all work together. In other words, to work in the elections and lobbying, and in doing protests that pressure politicians as well. To make her point that she thinks protest is important but not the main or only tactic that should be relied upon, Baden recalled the experience of the 2004 March for Women's Lives in Washington DC that drew nearly a million people. She said, "That turnout was huge, and still John Kerry didn't get elected."
This was a very true statement, and also very revealing. This provided a good opportunity to clarify further the difference between protest as a form of "pressure politics" in the service of legislative and electoral tactics, and mass independent political resistance aimed at changing the terms and arousing millions into political struggle all throughout society. The March for Women's Lives was, as Kadar properly identified it, mainly about mobilizing and arousing people politically to become a factor in getting John Kerry elected against George Bush. It was a form of pressure politics. It didn't get him elected, but even if he had been elected, Kerry was running to become a more effective commander in chief of the U.S. empire. Rallying people to get him in office is very different than moving people to stand up for the liberation of women!
Look at the content of the March for Women's Lives in 2004. It wasn't making a demand to defeat Bush's program of Christian fascist theocracy or mobilizing people and orienting them towards the kind of massive society-wide struggle this would require. It wasn't demanding Abortion On Demand and Without Apology! It was opposing some elements of the "extremism" of the Bush regime and offering a milder and re-branded vision of how to run the same empire with no promises at all to really take on and defeat Christian fascism. Also, it reinforced in people that their biggest political act was to campaign and to vote for the Democrats. This only served to demobilize people.
This is starkly different than mass independent resistance, where we go out and expose the complete immorality of forcing women to have children against their will, where we mobilize people to see the need to rely on themselves and stand up against this program, where we expose the roots of this war on women in the nature of this system, where we reveal and make the connections between this and the other crimes of this system, where we bring forward the need and basis to make a revolution to get rid of this oppression and to liberate women and emancipate humanity, and where we rally and fight for literally millions to join us in this struggle to defeat and reverse this war on women.
After this, the same young woman said she was extremely attracted to the idea of revolution and agreed with the need for this, but didn't think it was realistic to "stop driving a car" or "stop participating in the system by buying things or going to work in the meantime." This also provided a good opportunity to clarify the difference between "opting out" from the networks of the system but leaving the setup intact, and actually joining in building a movement for revolution and building the Revolutionary Communist Party as the leading core of this movement to get rid of this system and participating in many different ways in the course of this (including, having to go to work and function in the midst of the networks of this system which people must do today).
There were other questions that were explored, but I have chosen to focus on the ones that I thought were most important that day and the most important to share with readers because they clarify things people need to understand.
The last thing to mention that came up was the difference between insisting that the difference between us and the anti-abortion crowd is that "we respect everyone's individual choice about whether to have an abortion," whereas they "want to impose their views on everyone, even those who disagree." While that is certainly a difference, it is not the key difference and it begs the core question. The truth is fetuses are NOT babies, abortion is NOT murder, and women are NOT incubators. This is not just "our view," it is scientific fact! And we should not "respect" the views of people who insist otherwise; we should argue with them and dispel the lies they spread. I am not saying that we should be disrespectful to individuals who have been lied to, but as Bob Avakian has argued repeatedly, it is a form of contempt for the masses of people to refuse to argue with them or to think they are too stupid to understand something that they are wrong about. Especially on a question that matters so much, we have to argue and change people's minds—and we have to expose the lies and hypocrisy and immorality of those in power who make it their life-mission to propagate these lies and use them as the basis to enslave women.
The truth is, if abortion were murder (which it is not), it wouldn't be right to argue, "We respect your opinion that abortion is murder, please respect ours that it is a personal issue that a woman must be able to decide herself." No way. If it were murder, it would be necessary to oppose it. If it were murder, then the fact that a fetus was conceived through rape really wouldn't be a legitimate reason to kill it. So, the argument that "We respect your views, we just want you to respect ours," doesn't really hold up. The fact is fetuses are NOT independent social or biological beings, they are part of the woman's body. She is a person, the fetus is not. That scientific fact needs to be fought for and propagated. People who call abortion "murder" are WRONG and we need to fiercely struggle with them to change their minds and they need to be prevented, through massive political resistance, from imposing their enslaving ignorance on women.
It is time for people who care about women's right to abortion and women's rights more generally to stop clinging to the notion that what makes them right is that they are for individual choice when it comes to abortion. While of course it must be up to the individual woman to decide for herself without coercion or shame whether she will carry a pregnancy to term, and in that sense we are for her having that choice, there is a much deeper and more fundamental argument that must be aggressively made. We must fight for the scientific truth that fetuses are not babies, abortion is not murder, and women are not incubators and we must raise the just slogan pertaining to abortion that flows from this: Abortion On Demand and Without Apology.
Overall, I thought this panel was rich and important. It painted a picture of the extreme circumstances that we find ourselves in throughout this country and opened up some of the most critical questions of understanding and approach for going forward that have literally life and death stakes for women. I thank the Brooklyn/Queens NOW chapter for organizing it and look forward to working with them and others from the panel and in the room, including continuing to engage these critical questions of approach, as we go forward in this fight to defeat the war on women. In particular, as I announced on Saturday and several expressed interest in being part of, very soon we must take to the streets on March 8th for International Women's Day across this country to stand up against this war on women and for women's liberation worldwide. Check in at revcom.us/movement-for-revolution/stop-patriarchy/index.html and StopPatriarchy.org soon for information about these upcoming protests.
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