Vol.64/No.29 July 24, 2000
Trowe joins NY pro-choice action, meets young fighters
BY HILDA CUZCO
NEW YORK-- "Women have to have control of their own reproductive rights. Itīs part of the Constitution," said Leah Graniela, 20, one of the dozens of womenīs rights supporters attending the National Organization for Women (NOW) Rally for Reproductive Rights in front of the federal courthouse here.
The action celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court's rejection of a Nebraska 1999 antiabortion law that bans a medical procedure right-wingers call "partial birth abortion," clinically known as D&E [dilation and evacuation] abortion, performed by doctors in the second trimester of pregnancy.
Like Graniela, there were other young women among the some 80 people present who came to the rally looking for actions to defend a womanīs right to choose abortion. Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. vice president Margaret Trowe, talked to the activists and shared her experience as a longtime fighter for womenīs rights.
"In Wichita, Kansas, the antiabortion forces shut down the abortion clinics in an organized national mobilization in 1992," said Trowe to several activists gathered around. "But they were defeated after thousands mobilized to keep the clinics open." That battle was won after pro-choice supporters mobilized from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to New York by the thousands to defend the clinics and reaffirm that they should stay open.
Supporters of the Socialist Workers campaign introduced Trowe to the activists at the rally. Pointing out the headline of the Militant on the meat packers struggle in Minnesota, Trowe said she is a unionist, and a meat packer herself, and that workers are seeking to transform the unions into fighting instruments for working people.
Several Stuyvesant High School students were also present at the rally. One of them, Cara Wentworth, 17 years old, told the SWP vice-presidential candidate that she was among the students that staged a walkout March 3 in protest against the acquittal of the cops that killed Amadou Diallo, an immigrant worker from Guinea.
Several hundred high school students had marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to a rally by the federal courthouse chanting, "No Justice, No Peace," while dozens of Hunter High School students also marched from their school to a rally by Central Park.
Trowe introduced the Militant to her with the headline on the Supreme Court ruling, the Minnesota meat packers struggle, and others.
Wentworth expressed interest in the Young Socialists as well and talked to YS leader Olympia Newton.
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