The Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, won 24 years ago, was a product of the wave of struggles in the late 1960s and early '70s by women and men in the fight against the institutionalized domestic slavery to which women had been relegated by class society. The abortion rights victory opened the door for millions of women - especially working women, Blacks, Chicanas, and Puerto Ricans - to begin to control their own reproductive functions, their own bodies. It went a significant way toward establishing a fundamental human right for all women - the right to choose whether or not to bear a child - and marked a gain for the entire working class.

Since the mid-1970s, Washington has been chipping away at the right to abortion, especially limiting access for working-class women through the ban on Medicaid funding and other such measures. Another demagogic attempt to make deeper inroads on abortion rights has been the move to ban so-called partial birth abortions, adopted by Congress last year. While vetoing that measure, President Clinton made clear he is ready to sign a slightly modified version.

By their actions, the U.S. rulers have provided a framework in which rightists feel they can carry out attacks on abortion clinics with impunity. One of the more blatant examples is the decision by a U.S. District Court judge - just days before the Atlanta bombing - to acquit two opponents of abortion rights who blocked a clinic in New York state.

The judge declared them innocent on grounds that they were motivated by "conscience-driven religious belief."

The bombings in Atlanta and Tulsa are not isolated incidents, as police and government officials keep trying to insist.

In 1994 a doctor, two clinic workers, and a volunteer escort were killed by rightists at clinics that provide abortions. Last year, nearly a third of clinics providing abortion around the country reported acts of violence directed against them. Between 1977 and 1994 there were 1,700 acts of violence against abortion providers, including numerous bombings.

These violent actions are a sign of weakness, not strength, on the part of those who would push women back to the days of deadly back-alley abortions. Their attempts to roll back abortion rights with clinic blockades in the early 1990s failed, as supporters of women's rights mobilized to defend them. And they have been unable to reverse majority support, particularly among working people, for women's right to choose. A vocal, public response to the most recent attacks can serve to isolate and push back opponents of women's rights.

There is a stepped-up ideological campaign against women, particularly targeting the right to abortion, in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere today. As the capitalist economic system continues its downward spiral, the employing class must try to roll back, or at least slow down, some changes in consciousness about women's place in society. The goal of the bosses and their government is to undermine workers' political self-confidence and class consciousness in order to drive down the value of labor power, by increasing divisions in the working class.

The struggle for women's liberation is a form of the class struggle. Labor must include support for women's rights, and the fight for a woman's right to an abortion, in its demands. This is necessary as part of the transformation of the organized labor movement into an instrument of revolutionary struggle and the development of a class- struggle leadership of women and men.

Working-class fighters should take the lead today in defending abortion rights and demanding the government prosecute those responsible for the clinic bombings.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home