Showdown Around Abortion Rights Intensifies: Stop Patriarchy Leads Defiant Protest Against the Walk for Forced Motherhood
from a member of the Revolution Club and Stop Patriarchy | January 30, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
San Francisco, January 25.
As the anti-abortion movement surges forward on a wave of recently passed legislation that leaves women across the country desperate and trapped in unwanted pregnancies, the movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women (StopPatriarchy.org) led a loud and spirited, uncompromising protest against the 10th annual anti-abortion march in San Francisco. The anti-abortion march calls itself the “Walk for Life West Coast” and buses in tens of thousands of church-going abortion opponents to march down Market Street in the heart of San Francisco, to protest the 1973 Supreme Court decision to legalize abortion and to call for the absolute abolition of abortion rights nationwide. This happens as an addition to the original March for "Life" in Washington DC, whose main organizers made great attempts this year to "reach out to" and welcome, along with its usual Roman Catholic crowd, Christian fascist participants and speakers, such as Troy Newman of the vicious anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue and the champion of oppressive "traditional" family values, James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
Stop Patriarchy, after a year of fighting for the morality, the politics, and the slogan "Abortion on Demand and Without Apology!" nationwide, spent two weeks mobilizing at Bay Area college campuses, neighborhoods, and meetings with reproductive rights and social justice organizers. We called on people to stand up and openly oppose the "Walk for Forced Motherhood" on January 25, 2014. We talked with hundreds of people—those who we connected with through the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride in the summer of 2013, and also many people who are just now waking up to the intolerable situation we find ourselves in—about the current state of emergency that abortion rights are in. We brought out the real nature and agenda of the anti-abortion movement and the patriarchal system that gives it credibility, the overall war on women raging worldwide, the great need for nationwide resistance that relies on independent political action and projects real moral clarity in telling the truth about abortion, and the need for real revolution to put an end to the oppression of women.
We learned that there is a growing sense among college students, activists, and others, that there is an assault on abortion rights taking place, and found that when people learn more fully the scope and depth of the real emergency, there is among some, shock and anger. By the end of 2013: 70 restrictions against reproductive rights were passed on the state level, five states have only one surgical abortion clinic left, a whole package of abortion restrictions was passed in Texas and then upheld by the Supreme Court, and there are huge sections of women in rural areas—and an increasing number in broad sections of the country—whom are now being forced into motherhood or driven to dangerous illegal abortion methods. We exposed that a slave-like role for women is being aggressively re-asserted and that the future of women is at stake. We argued that relying on the official political process—such as Democratic “representatives” and the electoral system—that is steeped in patriarchy, has proven to be not only ineffective, but has had a dangerously de-mobilizing effect on the pro-choice movement.
On January 22, 2014, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Stop Patriarchy Bay Area called a press conference and stood with the president of San Francisco NOW, an attorney for civil and environmental justice, and representatives from Occupy SF, World Can't Wait, and Revolution newspaper to denounce the Walk for "Life" West Coast flags that still hang from city lampposts, the Walk for "Life" itself, and the entire anti-abortion movement. The flags declare that "Abortion Hurts Women." Representatives for Stop Patriarchy declared:
“This is no time to stay silent. Forced motherhood is female enslavement, nothing less. The real question is this: Should women actually, really, be able to participate fully in society along with men, or will women be stifled, threatened, shamed and subjugated to the state and to male domination?”
and
“The anti-abortion movement has never been about saving babies as they would say, but has consistently opposed birth control and real sex education… because it has, at its core, always been about controlling women. The idea that women are nothing but breeders and are selfish, immoral, or irresponsible if they choose otherwise is deadly… Stop Patriarchy calls on everyone who believes that women should have the right to abortion, to step into the fray in support of Abortion On Demand and Without Apology. Stop Patriarchy calls on YOU to stand up, uncompromising, AGAINST the Walk for ‘Life’ this Saturday and beyond, with the message that this generation needs to hear the most: Fetuses are not babies, women are not incubators, and abortion is not murder. Because that is the truth.”
“Hunker down”?? Bullshit!
On Friday, January 24, the day before the Walk for “Life,” a notable pro-choice organizer went on KPFA Radio and encouraged advocates of abortion rights to stay home that day. “Given that these folks are from out of town and don’t represent us here,” she said, “we’re essentially encouraging people to not pay more attention to them than we otherwise would… They’ll come here and spend some money and then go away. And then what we really need to do is hunker down—among those of us who understand what this really means for women, and share the belief that we do have here in the Bay Area.”
This is such small and elitist thinking that it should be embarrassing, but such a statement concentrates the unacceptable stance and losing strategy of many major pro-choice organizations at this time. The “hunker down” (a.k.a. “lie down”) strategy and its advocates are in absolute denial of the fact that the anti-abortion message is growing in its influence, both over people's thinking and definitely in its actual effect on women's lives and access to abortion nation-wide. Several generations have come up believing that abortion is a negative thing, even among those who support the right. They've only ever heard it spoken about as either murder (from the Republicans and other anti-abortionists) or a tragic, if sometimes necessary, choice (by Democrats like the Clintons); almost no one really understands the full anti-woman program of the anti-abortion movement.
It is both false and stupid to assert that nobody in “the enlightened Bay Area” is against abortion. Bullshit. Talk to some people on the street and you will find otherwise. Go to the abortion clinic in Bernal Heights and talk to the regular Catholic prayer circles or the Christian fascists with their bloody fetus truck that park outside. Go to the fake abortion clinics in Nob Hill or Oakland, where people who reject basic science are paid to give false medical advice about abortion. Go to the churches in Berkeley and Oakland that happily hosted Rev. Childress of BlackGenocide.org last weekend, the man who says, “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.” People in the Bay Area are being influenced by the attacks on abortion rights from all sides.
Furthermore, it is just outright immoral to refuse to take a stand for something you believe in and something that is desperately needed (opposition to the anti-abortion movement and ideologies) on the basis that it doesn’t directly affect you. Right now, there are women in rural areas and many major cities across this country who are being driven to desperation because abortion is practically illegal for miles and miles around them.
Finally, it is delusional to abstract any one area from the national picture. Will it not affect San Francisco, and everywhere, if this monster of an anti-abortion movement is left to decide what the role of women will be in society? We don’t need little bastions or oases where women can decide their futures, we need that to be the basic, guaranteed, codified culture and reality for women everywhere. We need a society where women are liberated, where the anti-abortion “opinion” with all its venom for independent women as well as its hatred of science, can’t even get a hearing!
January 25: A beautiful outpouring of rage
The day of the Walk for “Life” arrived. 200 people, overwhelmingly youth, came to the intersection at Powell & Market Streets to powerfully confront the anti-abortion march as it came through. Around 100 people going about their business downtown San Francisco joined us, as we told them that an anti-abortion march of 50,000 would soon descend on the street, and why it matters that at this moment there is public opposition to this whole woman-hating agenda. A contingent of revolutionaries and feminists from Los Angeles arrived with a huge banner that read: “El feto NO es un bebé. Aborto NO es homicidio. La mujer NO es una incubadora.” Hundreds of people took up signs and stickers, or bought t-shirts that said, “Abortion on demand and without apology!” A dozen students from Mills College in Oakland came as a force to be reckoned with, grabbed bullhorns, and ran to oppose the “Pro Life Generation” banner, shouting, “Every generation has an obligation to women’s liberation!” As one college student declared, “Today, there are more of them than there are of us, but we have the moral high ground.” When the anti-abortion march came through with drums, we danced to the beat and chanted, “Break! The chains! Break, break the chains! If women don’t have rights, we are nothing but slaves!” and “Hell no hell no, we won’t go back!” People pointed at the anti-abortion march and shouted together, “This march hates women!” and “Without this basic right, women can’t be free! Abortion on demand and without apology!” It was a beautiful outpouring of rage in the right direction, of people coming together and lifting their aspirations to the possibilities of women’s liberation, lifting their voices together in unison and demanding what is right.
It is imperative that we opposed them that day and every day going forward. All these lies about abortion hurting women and babies must be countered publicly with the truth. The full agenda of the anti-abortion movement must be exposed as an all-out push to re-assert archaic-style patriarchy here and around the world. People everywhere need to see that there is a growing force that they can and must join with to fight and defeat this war on women the only way it can be defeated: by relying on ourselves.
The counter-protest followed the anti-abortion march for a mile down Market Street, challenging them all the way and letting them know their Dark Ages morality was not welcome. Then we pulled off on a side street and held a speak-out with many of those who had stood up for abortion rights. Several people on their way to do something else were so disgusted by the enormous anti-abortion action, they were moved to join in. All throughout the speak-out, speakers were applauded and cheered on by the crowd that had clearly stood on the right side of this struggle that day, and knew it. One young woman was buying shoes and was so mad when she saw what was happening that she turned her shoebox into a sign that said, “My body, my choice” and joined in. A middle-aged Black woman said she was at the first Walk for “Life” in 2005 and will never give up this right. She said that first year she stood up against them, she had to ask them, “Are you pro-life? Are you pro-life for the babies that are dying in Iraq? You’re not against children being killed in Afghanistan. Are you really pro-life? Because that’s what pro-life means; you would be pro-life for them too. You’re not pro-life, you’re about controlling women’s bodies… and I’m about sick of it.”
A first-year college student said, “It took me awhile to find this group. I was like, ‘I’m alone!’ This shouldn’t be an issue. What year is this??” and several other young people spoke about how they hadn’t done anything like this before, and they were surprised to feel so accepted, “empowered,” and like they had found their place at this action and with Stop Patriarchy. Another young woman pointed to the Stop Patriarchy stickers many were wearing that say, “We are the Liberation Generation,” and said, “Did you see that group that said ‘Pro-Life Generation’? Can we talk about this? Come on, what do we really want to stand for? This is a movement that wants to take us backwards, and our generation cannot let that happen! And we have to fight like hell to make sure that doesn’t happen.” Someone else said, “Okay, I really believe that we are born equal. You have to be born to get the rights! I should have more rights than something without a brain!” A young Latina from LA said, “I’m going to take all this back to Los Angeles!” and urged others to organize with and spread the core messages and program for women’s liberation that Stop Patriarchy represents in the world.
One young woman said that in 2012 she was in the Walk for “Life,” on the wrong side of the issue. She said that she saw a counter-protest as she was marching along, and was provoked to do some research. So she arrived at our counter-protest with a sign that said, “I was lied to so I’d be pro-life” and another that said, “Not the church, not the state, women will decide their fate.” Another young woman said, “You tell me which church teaches sex education. Where are they? Nowhere.” Then she went on to tell the story of her Catholic cousin in Mexico who committed suicide after she couldn’t feed her three children. This is one of a long litany of devastating situations that the outlawing and the stigma on abortion creates, and it is long past time that we put a real end to the epic saga of unnecessary deaths and foreclosed dreams that the anti-abortion movement wants to multiply and perpetuate.
Several people expressed great frustration that the battle over abortion rights is still an issue. That here we are, 41 years after Roe v. Wade, and there is still such a great need to “fight like hell” for this most basic of rights. Others stood up to say that if we want to see a day when this fight is won, when we can move beyond all this oppression of women into a society where women are truly participating in every realm as equals, we need revolution and socialism with the ultimate goal of communism. Everyone who had fought that day was urged to read and spread revcom.us and Revolution newspaper, and to actively build the movement for the kind of revolution that has the potential to truly liberate women and emancipate humanity; we need to wrench humanity free from the oppressive and exploitative system that by its nature enslaves women, commodifies everything, alienates people from themselves and each other, and enforces impossible and undesirable gender roles.
This day was a living example of the fury of women that exists right below the surface that can and must be unleashed societywide. It is also an example of how stifling and demobilizing the Democrats truly are. Mainstream “women’s groups” that claim to be about abortion rights—but consistently refuse to openly expose and resist the anti-abortion movement because of their ties to the Democratic Party—have got to bust out from underneath that suffocating wing. Everyone who wants to fight for real against the all-sided assault on abortion rights, and for women’s liberation, must discard the “hunker down” strategy as historically debunked. Everyone who wants to stop the war on women: there is an urgent need for you to stand in defiance of those who would see women’s lives and futures openly subordinate to the state and to male domination. If you are pro-choice, there is a need for you to refuse to take counsel from those who urge us to stick our heads in the sand and wait for the “pendulum to swing back” or for “our representatives” in the halls of power to save us. You and many others can and must join in this kind of righteous awakening and massive, uncompromising resistance against patriarchy, in order to change the terms of the debate, turn the tide, and defeat the war on women. Let’s remember this day and build on it, what happened and why it matters that a crowd of a couple hundred, without a shred of intimidation, took on the hordes of archaic thinkers, religious leaders, and misogynist legislators, and said, “We have the moral high ground. Your time is up.”
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.