USA Labor union women join NOW in fight for abortion rights THE NATIONAL Organization for Women (NOW) has called for massive demonstrations in Washington, DC, on March 9 and Los Angeles on March 16, to defend women's right to abortion. These marches, which are also commemorating International Women's Day (March 8), are the culmination of a campaign launched by NOW at its national convention held last year in New Orleans.
The following article is based on an interview with Andrea Morrell, a member of the leadership of the American Socialist Workers Party, who was asked to comment on the general situation of the women's has deprived many working-class women, especially women of the oppressed nationalities in the United States, of the ability to implement their right to abortion. There are fewer than 12 states that still fund abortion for poor women. Attempts have been made to deprive young women of this right by ruling that women under 18 must have parental consent. Funding for abortions for women in the military and federal government is being cut off.
Most recently, toward the end of 1985, the Reagan administration,. pushed the Supreme Court into a sweeping review of Roe vs. Wade [the landmark 1973 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that a state may not prevent a woman from having an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy] by asking it to pass on the constitutionality of statutes in two states, rennsylvanıa and Illinois, Pennsylvania and Illinois, which negate legal abortion. A decision should be returned soon, and one upholding the statutes would wipe out the 1973 victory. The rebirth of protest
The response of NOW to these attacks needs to be placed in context. Since the 1984 presidential campaign into which all the social movements -women's, peace, labor - plunged, first into the Jesse Jackson campaign and then into the Mondale-Ferraro, there has been a rethinking going on in these movements. The year 1985 saw the rebirth of protest, including the most significant action to date against US involvement in Central America and the Caribbean, the April 20 demonstrations in which 100,000 people participated nationwide. South Africa and protest against apartheid have moved into the center of US politics, in the labor movement, on the campuses and in many communities. Many young women on the campuses are involved in these activities and are also becoming involved in the abortion-rights campaign. And, indeed, NOW, at its convention, targeted young women as a primary constituency to get involved in the fight.
Until the new NOW initiative there had not been since the defeat of the ERA any very visible and aggressive public action on the part of the organized women's liberation forces. Nevertheless, a whole generation of young women are now playing activist and leadership roles in organizations that oppose the US war machine and in the Free South Africa more ments. It was noticeable that a April 20 demonstrations, International Viewpoint 10 Marci movement in the United States. ANDREA MORRELL
The call for demonstrations by NOW was preceded by a vast national drive for one million signatures on petitions affirming the right of women to control their own bodies.
These steps by the largest feminist organization in the United States mark an important turnabout in the women's movement which has been somewhat discouraged and demoralized since the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution in 1978. Strong support for the ERA had rallied from many sectors of the society including the labor movement, but could not stop the ruling-class offensive that ended with the failure of the state of Illinois to ratify the amendment and, effectively, the end of the drive for ratification.
The effect of this blow to the women's liberation movement was to cause a rethinking of strategy. The leadership of NOW came to the conclusion that it was necessary to rely less on marches, actions and the building of a movement, and more on the election of politicians friendly to women's rights. This inevitably meant a deeper involvement in Democratic Party election campaigns. The climax to this involvement came in the 1984 presidential campaign when nearly the entire organization turned into a doorbell-ringing machine for the Walter Mondale-Geraldine Ferraro ticket. Part of the enthusiasm for this ticket was due to the notion that women would benefit from the election of a female as vice president of the United States. The MondaleFerraro austerity platform soon showed how false this notion was. 16
Adding to the sense of discouragement among women throughout this period of Ronald Reagan's presidency has been the use of the executive power as a weapon against the working class in general and women in particular.
Reagan has always opposed the ERA, and he is especially vociferous in his opposition to legal abortion. At the beginning of 1985 he sent a message of encouragement by telephone to participants in an anti-abortion demonstration, and just recently he sent a telegram expressing sympathy to the funeral of a fetus. He is thus completely identified with the most right-wing, fetus-fetishist opponents of women's right to control their own bodies. He is joined in this, of course, by many reactionary people in both parties. The result of this encouragement from the top during the last two years has been a dramatic increase in abortion-clinic bombings and vigilante raids on these clinics during the hours that they are open and women are having abortions. These attacks have provoked such outrage that recently the Department of Justice has been forced to prosecute and convict the most notorious of these outlaws, the Florida "Christmas bomber."
The assaults on abortion rights since 1975 have cut deeply into the whole social fabric for women, especially poor and working women. The cutting off of Medicaid [since 1976 a program of medical aid for those unable to afford medical care, financed by the state and federal governments] funding for abortions
NOW was not there as an organization, there were thousands upon thousands of young women, many of them wearing feminist or ERA T-shirts but who were there marching against the war. There are women who are central leaders of some of the big antiwar organizations such as Mobilization for Survival.
We are seeing a response, too, by women activists to the social measures taken in defense of women's rights by the Nicaraguans and, earlier, the Grenadans. Women activists have pointed out that at least in Nicaragua under the Sandinista government there is an ERA because women's equality is written into the constitution. AMNLAE, the Nicaraguan women s AMNLAE. the Nicaraguan women's organization, has been very conscious of trying to reach out to, speak to and link up with feminists in the United States. AMNLAE representatives have come to NOW conventions where they have spoken in workshops and had tables. They have explained the role they played in overthrowing Somoza, what the revolution has meant for women and how women have been able to step forward in Nicaraguan society. They have urged women in the United States to come to the forefront in the defense of our sisters and brothers in Nicaragua against US attack.
These exchanges with Nicaraguan women resulted in a stiffly worded antiwar resolution being passed by the 1985 NOW convention. It opposes the US nuclear arsenal and US military intervention against the Nicaraguans and Salvadorans on the same grounds that earlier NOW had opposed US intervention in Vietnam. This resolution, recalling the positive stance that NOW took at that time, is an important progressive step taken by women.
Trade-union women are also an important part of this renewed activity. Beginning around 1976 it became increasingly clear that the union movement was willing to participate in the effort to get the ERA ratified. It correctly posed the amendment as a working-class issue. Most working-class women in the United States require two incomes if they have children. That has been true since inflation began to skyrocket in the early 1970s. Therefore, equal pay for equal work is a crucial demand. In this context the ruling class saw an opportunity to divide the working class along gender lines, and thus began its attack on women's rights as part of its general offensive against the working class.
The Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), which was formed during this time, is a tenacious organization. It is linked to the AFLCIO and is even represented on its
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986
SPANISH STATE
Executive. It has not yet managed to overcome a basic problem - its domination by a bureaucratic trade-union leadership and the fact that it does not really organize women at the base of the unions.