As the article below shows, the opposite is the case. Ever since a rising radicalization and a fundamental shift in the balance of class forces obliged the U.S. Supreme Court to hand down the Roe v. Wade decision decriminalizing abortion in 1973, there have been moves by federal, state, and local courts and legislative bodies that have in practice limited access to this medical procedure, especially for working-class women. Federal funding has been cut off; abortion is frequently not covered by medical plans; and numerous state governments have imposed waiting periods and parental consent provisions.

All this has been an unbroken trend from the Carter presidency in the last half of the 1970s—when the Democratic president signed the Hyde Amendment into law, the first salvo against the Roe ruling—through the two terms of William Clinton. At the root of this bipartisan chipping away at one of the most fundamental rights of women is the downward spiral of the capitalist system and the need of the employers to shore up their declining profit rates.

At the same time, the large majority of working people continue to support abortion rights—as the massive outpouring for the April 25 march on Washington showed—and most bourgeois politicians in both parties recognize that prospects for reversing Roe v. Wade are not very good now.

Young women and men committed to the fight to defend a woman’s right to choose who may be swayed by Hillary Clinton’s arguments and other myths perpetrated by the Democrats should seriously consider the facts presented in the article below.

Abortion was not decriminalized because of liberal, or conservative, benevolence on the high court. The 1973 decision registered what had been won in struggle by the mass civil rights movement and the rise of a women’s liberation movement over decades. It cannot be taken back without big battles and a major defeat to the labor movement. It is the working class and its vanguard layers fighting to resist the bosses’ offensive against our wages and standard of living today that those supporting a woman’s right to choose abortion need to turn their eyes toward, not Kerry, Clinton, or any other bourgeois politician.

Ever since World War II, with the massive entry of women into the workforce, women have had a growing weight in economic and social struggles. Compelled by capitalism’s whip, by its need to drive down the price of labor power, an ever-declining percentage of women are simply “invisible” producers and service providers within the home. More and more women are individual and independent actors. And this has become a worldwide trend.

The weight women’s struggles for emancipation have in society today, a fact registered clearly on April 25, is a historic change that improves the odds for the working class.
 
 
Related articles:
Mass march in D.C. backs women’s right to choose
Democrats’ record on abortion  
 
 
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