After decades of struggle and massive street mobilizations, Argentinians win abortion rights.
On December 30, the Argentinian Senate passed the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy bill, legalizing abortion for any pregnant person. This victory follows decades of struggle led by Argentina’s women’s movement, LGBTQ community, and labor unions. As the bill was being debated, thousands of militant demonstrators filled the streets surrounding the National Congress to show support, erupting in cheers once the law passed. “We won it in the streets. We’ll see you again in the streets,” said Gostine Bete, and abortion rights activist with the Movimiento Popular por Dignidad.
Argentina’s new law guarantees free, safe, and legal abortions to women and people of any gender who become pregnant and request an abortion within the first 14 weeks with extensions in cases of rape, risk of life or health of pregnant person, or risk of still birth. Along with the right to abortion, a 1,000-day Plan bill was passed to strengthen healthcare service and nutrition for mothers and newborns from pregnancy until the child’s second birthday.
Fight Back Against ALL Attacks on Reproductive Rights
It is imperative that the people of Louisiana vote NO on Amendment 1 on Tuesday, November 3 to protect abortion access in the state.
The capitalist class will not rest until they have stripped the working class of our rights to make our own decisions about our bodies. In Louisiana, they have been campaigning relentlessly to take away our rights to abortion, in recent years passing the most restrictive laws in the country. When their last attempt, which would have made abortion nearly impossible to access, failed, they immediately tried again. This time, they are seeking to limit abortion access via Amendment 1, which will be on the ballot in the November election. The amendment would prevent the state constitution from providing any support for abortion.
Just as with the previous attacks on our reproductive rights, this amendment is backed by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards and state senator Katrina Jackson, as well as the entire Republican party, Louisiana Right to Life, and the Catholic Church. All of them are funded by out-of-state, right-wing foundations, think tanks, and organizations like the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council and other capitalists. These are the same entities who have backed anti-LGBTQ, anti-woman, anti-reproductive rights laws across the country.
The purpose of these laws is to prevent women from participating in society, terrorize LGBTQ people, and extract as much profit as possible from the working class. These same capitalists back wars around the world, keep children in the concentration camps across Louisiana (where they have also forced hysterectomies on people), support the death penalty and mass incarceration, and subject the working class, especially Black workers, to fascist police terror. Their claims of being “pro-life” are nothing but blatant hypocrisy. They care only for profit, not for children, unborn or otherwise. These laws are acts of terror against the people.
We must not only vote against them but also organize. The state’s laws against abortion already greatly limit access, prevent abortion from being covered by any insurance, and impose unjust and unnecessary restrictions on providers. We must vote against this amendment and fight back against every limitation to abortion access already on the books. Abortion must be free, accessible, and legal. Anything less is an attack on all working class people’s rights to control of our own bodies.
Title X is a program that provides affordable healthcare options to people with low incomes. Title X was put in the system to give women a right to their own bodies. Donald Trump is now trying to silence women’s voices by taking away the choice of birth control options. Birth control was made for the sole reason to let women choose the option of safer sex and allow more control over their bodies; without it women will no longer have that power within their own skin. 98% of women who have been sexually active have used birth control at one point in their lives.
Trump is trying to criminalize abortions and miscarriages. Back in the day, before birth control methods, some women who got pregnant would use a clothes hanger to abort the fetus because abortion was illegal. It was extremely dangerous but their only option. With abortion now legalized, it gives women a safe way to make their own choices about their bodies. If Donald Trump takes away birth control and makes abortion illegal, it makes women completely stuck.
Planned Parenthood is also at stake. Planned Parenthood helps provide physical, emotional, educational and sexual health care to those who might not be able to afford those services elsewhere. Donald Trump is taking away $60 million in Planned Parenthood funding. If they lose too much money, prices will start going up for patients who already can not afford higher medical prices to begin with.
These laws were put in place to give women their rights to their own bodies. Women who get pregnant should have the right to multiple choices on which way they would like to handle it. Women should also have the right to choose not to get pregnant if that’s where they’re at in their life. But ultimately, it is the woman’s choice. Donald Trump has no right to take away rights that do not affect him.
The Trump administration is carrying out an assault on Title X, a law that created programs to provide birth control and other reproductive health services to millions of workers across the United States. Planned Parenthood and other organizations funded through Title X were recently informed that they must comply with a gag rule that will prevent providers from giving birth control or information on abortion to patients. The administration is moving forward with the gag rule in spite of multiple cases in the courts.
While Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of reproductive healthcare in the country, is the primary organization affected, almost all providers of reproductive care will be restricted by this rule. Planned Parenthood alone will lose $60 million in funding, and as clinics who cannot find funding elsewhere shut down, those that are still open are overwhelmed. Some clinics are increasing the number of patients by 70% to make up for the loss. Rates are already going up at clinics as they try to make up for the lack of funding.
The rule is another attack on reproductive rights which attempts to criminalize abortion and miscarriage and prevent the working class from having control of their bodies and lives. By attacking access to birth control and abortion, the ruling class is attempting to prevent women from fully participating in society. The ruling class will still have access to reproductive care, being able to afford providers who do not rely on Title X funding; this gag rule is a specific attack on poor folks, people of color, women, and LGBTQ people.
Though Roe v. Wade has not yet been overturned and the legal right to an abortion still exists, states have been restricting abortion access at an accelerated rate in the past year. Actions around the country have protested each new law, with a coalition of activists in Louisiana even holding a die-in at the state capitol and a major protest that blocked New Orleans’ Poydras St. in midday traffic.
A larger, militant movement is needed to prevent the complete rollback of reproductive rights. Restrictions on reproductive rights not only keep women from participating in society, they also rob women of the autonomy needed to organize for their liberation. Because women’s labor (inside and outside the home) generates enormous wealth for society, capitalists will always have a vested interest in exploiting them. This is why women must step into their revolutionary power and fight back against the capitalists. The path to women’s liberation is bound up in the revolutionary struggle to abolish capitalism.
Activists in British-occupied Northern Ireland have won a major victory for reproductive and LGBTQ rights. With the passing of a new law, a ban on abortion dating back over 150 years has been overturned and same-sex marriage has been legalized. Both will go into effect next year, and those currently being persecuted for having abortions will be freed sooner. A coalition that involved activist groups, trade unions, and more fought for the new laws, bringing an end to some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. Earlier this year, the Republic of Ireland also legalized abortion and made it available for free to all people.
On June 6, 2019, the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously on a resolution that states their opposition to the recent abortion ban bill that Governor John Edwards signed May 30. The bill that has been passed is another assault on working people’s reproductive healthcare as it bans abortions in the state of Louisiana after the 6 week mark of pregnancy. This bill has no exceptions for rape or incest and in conjunction with the already existing Hyde Amendment, which blocks Medicaid funding for abortion, access to choice for working/poor people is increasingly impossible.
At the council meeting, members of the New Orleans Workers Group demanded that City Council take the necessary steps to declare New Orleans an abortion sanctuary city and that they decline to prosecute anyone seeking an abortion or providing one within Orleans Parish.
Resolutions look nice for the careers of politicians who want a reputation for being “on the right side of history,” but what does that do for us workers who are most affected? Nothing! We need to demand more of city council members and law enforcement. We demand action!
History has already shown us the terrible consequences for poor people when abortion access is restricted. The results of this ban are death, forced generational poverty, and further oppression of child-bearing people. This is just what the capitalists want, and without a mass movement to engage in struggle over our human rights, this is just what they will get.
Here in New Orleans, local politicians rave about being a “progressive city” with Democrats in office and a handful of liberal policies that contrast the rest of the Republican State. However, this has historically meant very little as Baton Rouge continuously denies New Orleans home rule.
Think making New Orleans an abortion sanctuary city is too bold? Just last week, an all-white-male city council in Waskom, TX, declared their city a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Waskom, TX, conservatives wanted to prevent the opening of an abortion facility after the one in Shreveport, LA, just 20 miles east of their town, was threatened with closure following Louisiana’s abortion ban. If the right-wing can so easily declare sanctuary cities to their liking, why can’t New Orleans do so for its people? It is long overdue that New Orleans take up the struggle against Baton Rouge.
Protesters demonstrate against the abortion ban bill at the Louisiana State Capitol building on May 15, 2019, in Baton Rouge.
Backed by Big Oil and War Profiteers; They All Lie, Don’t Care if Children Die
Protesters say: We Won’t Go Back!
The push for laws banning abortion is led mainly by rich white men and funded by ultra-rich capitalists. These are the same people who oppose equal pay for women, civil rights laws, raising the minimum wage, and funding for programs that help women and families raise children. These are the same people that cheer for wars that kill thousands of children. They encourage their buddy war profiteers to raid the federal budget while they try to end programs like Food Stamps and WIC. They are for profit-making jails, religious intolerance and environmental destruction. They deny funds for programs that would address Louisiana’s maternal mortality crisis, where more women die in childbirth than anywhere else in the country—the number of deaths being twice as high among Black women. While they wrap themselves in the cloak of religion, their real motive is to increase profits by further driving women down.
These immoral forces have hidden hands and deep pockets. Their funders include the Koch brothers—oil billionaires and extreme racists responsible for widespread voter suppression—who run the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC gives politicians money in exchange for passing prewritten laws. A majority of the Louisiana legislature are recipients of ALEC funds and are members. Gov. Edwards gave the keynote address at their recent convention. These hypocritical men have always used their wealth to fly “their” wives and mistresses to have abortions no matter what they proclaim. They want to limit the number of heirs to their wealth. Banning abortions will not stop them; it will just mean that more working class women will die.
In Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the other 47 states, reproductive choice rallies took place May 21 and 22. Tens of thousands of people came out. Every poll shows the majority of Americans support choice, including abortion access. Photo: Birmingham, Ala.
WOMEN CANNOT THRIVE OR BE EQUAL WITHOUT REPRODUCTIVE CHOICE
RICH MEN WANT TO FORCE WOMEN INTO CHILDBEARING
Women should be free to choose whether to have an abortion, use birth control, or raise children. Whether her decision is based on concern for the rest of her children, her religious beliefs, health, rape or incest or timing, this is a fundamental right. Without this right, women are deprived of full participation in every aspect of society. Without this right, women will die and be driven to desperation.
At the same time that abortion access is criminalized, women are being driven deeper into poverty, especially single moms. The Catholic Church, like all other institutional religions, has already declared women second class to preserve male white supremacy. They even ban birth control, which most Catholic women use because they are smart and care about their families.
On May 22, hundreds of demonstrators rallied at Poydras and St. Charles Ave. in New Orleans to demand full funding for all programs that help women raise children if they choose to do so, including free abortion access.
REAL CHOICE IS ABOUT HAVING ABORTION ACCESS, BIRTH CONTROL, LIVING WAGES AND SOCIAL PROGRAMS TO HELP RAISE HEALTHY CHILDREN
The recent demonstration in New Orleans organized by Women With a Vision, the New Orleans Abortion Fund, Black Youth Project 100, Peoples’ Assembly, New Orleans Workers Group and the Hospitality Workers Alliance demanded full funding for all the programs that help women raise children if they choose to do so, while so called right-to-lifers are part of the right wing forces opposing this. Pro-choice means fighting family separation by mass incarceration and imprisonment of our immigrant sisters and brothers. Pro-choice means good schools, early childhood education, full-service free neighborhood childcare centers and sex education and abortion access. It means standing against racism, homophobia and transphobia. There are two movements here. The pro-choice movement stands for uplifting the people in all regards. Those behind the abortion bans are also behind every other right wing attack on the people.
NO SHAME IN HAVING AN ABORTION.
THE SHAME IS ON THE IMMORAL FORCES THAT IMPOVERISH AND CRIMINALIZE WOMEN FOR PURSUING OUR ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO REPRODUCTIVE CHOICE
More and more, women workers and youth are coming into movements for social change: unions, community organizations and revolutionary groups. The anti-choice forces want women to be chained, desperate and unable to participate. But Orleans Parish women and women across the U.S. are declaring that whatever laws they pass, we are still the greatest power. Our voices are being raised, louder and clearer—let the ground shake under these greedy, rotten, rich men.
The Koch brothers, billionaire oil tycoons, bribe legislators around the country, especially in Louisiana, to vote against equal pay, birth control, abortion, family benefits and women’s health care, and raising the minimum wage (the majority of minimum wage workers are women). The bottom line of this is the profits extracted from the underpaid labor of women workers. While Trump boasts of raping women, these so-called moral Christians cheer him on as it confirms their view of male supremacy. It has nothing to do with religion or morality. It is all about using every means to curtail our rights and make us poorer so it is harder to fight them. Birth control, abortion and programs to help raise children made it possible for women to control our lives and take part in political life. They seek to declare that we are servants and sexual receptacles because men should have rights over us.
Religion is a personal matter, and these are personal choices every woman has the right to make without male representatives fronting for Wall Street, criminalizing our decisions. The so-called right to life movement is a right-wing crusade controlled and funded for the benefit of rich men. They prey on women.
The Louisiana House passed by a vote of 90 to 3 a bill that prohibits Planned Parenthood from obtaining an abortion license. Planned Parenthood clinics are non-profits run by people who really care about women. Their clinics are often our only option for abortion, medical screenings and contraception.
Twenty Ohio Republicans have co-sponsored a bill to ban all abortions—punishable by death for women and doctors. Ohio’s abortion ban has no exceptions for rape or incest, or even to save a woman’s life, beginning at the moment of conception. The Kentucky legislature has a bill with a death penalty for abortion, and a candidate for lt. governor in Idaho said the death penalty would be an effective “deterrent” for abortion.
Women are fighting back across the country. Our labor is exploited for their profits. We can show up to work now, but they should remember we can strike for our rights: on March 8th, International Working Women’s Day, the women of Spain shut down the entire country.
