Over the course of the 28 years since the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, the capitalist rulers, under successive Democratic and Republican party administrations on both the state and federal level, have been whittling away at the availability of abortion, particularly for working-class women.

This has included the denial of Medicaid funds for abortion with the Congressional adoption of the Hyde amendment in 1976, the passage of laws subjecting young women to a "parental notification" requirement, and the imposition of waiting periods before being allowed to receive an abortion.

These actions all have a strong class bias, affecting working women in disproportionate numbers. In fact, as of 1998, some 86 percent of U.S. counties and one-third of U.S. cities had no abortion providers, adding the cost of travel and lodging to other obstacles confronting working-class women. While court rulings have reiterated the fact that Roe remains the law of the land, the bipartisan offensive has effectively denied access to abortion to a growing number of working women.

Although top leaders of major women's rights organizations backed the Clinton administration for eight years, working women faced a different reality under the assault on working people by the government and the employers. Speedup on the job, declining real wages, the growth of temporary work and part-time jobs, the cutting of health care and pension programs, the lengthening of the workweek, and declining farm income are facts of life for millions of women. These are added to the brutal termination of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, dramatic cuts in the food stamp program, and other rollbacks in social programs that have also had a deep impact on women.

As the numbers of women in the workforce continue to grow, the fight to defend a woman's right to choose abortion becomes more central to forging a labor movement that fights in the interests of all the exploited and oppressed. Only with the right to control their own bodies can women begin to reassert their full human identity as productive human beings and join as equals in social and political life. This in turn helps to break down divisions in the union movement, and enhance its combat unity.

Protest actions like the April 22 demonstration and mobilizations by the labor movement--not reliance on the promises of capitalist politicians--point the road forward as the road to defend abortion rights and answer the rightist and other capitalist forces seeking to roll back this most vital of gains.
 
 
Related article:
NOW calls national march for abortion rights  
 
 
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