Attacks on choice part of anti-worker agenda

Apr 11, 2011

And the beat goes on. Right-wing, pro-corporate politicians continue their attacks on working and poor people across the country. At the same time, they are escalating their war on women’s rights and health care, but not without resistance.

Right-wing legislators, buoyed by the Tea Party, are pursuing their ideological agenda in Congress, and where they can muster the votes in state legislatures, they seek to impose outrageous restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, even tying them to budgetary bills. In this year alone, 351 bills have been proposed which severely limit women’s right to not only abortion but birth control. This is on top of existing restrictive laws.

Since Jan. 1, Republican legislators have aggressively sought to limit women’s access to abortion and contraception, led by House Speaker John Boehner. They have proposed numerous state bills to stop government funding of all abortions or to place more limitations and obstacles for women to navigate in order to obtain them. Ten states have bills pending that would require pregnant women to watch pre-abortion ultrasounds, although they’re near defeat in Montana and Kentucky.

Other anti-choice measures go further. Some laws, such as Idaho’s, would criminalize violations of abortion restrictions, even jailing doctors. In Utah, women who have miscarried could face homicide charges. A few state bills would even legalize violence against abortion providers.

South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed the most intrusive and restrictive anti-abortion law in the country on March 22. It calls for a three-day waiting period — the longest of any state — between an initial medical consultation and an abortion. It also imposes mandatory “counseling,” including for rape survivors, via lectures filled with medical misinformation, from unqualified, religious-based abortion opponents at bogus “pregnancy centers.” Their sole aim is to frighten women and stop them from making their own decisions and accessing legal medical procedures.

This law imposes even more hardships for women with few resources, who have to travel far to reach the Planned Parenthood facility in Sioux Falls and/or find housing for several days. Doctors fly in from other states only once a week to perform abortions.

Right-wing politicians have also stepped up their anti-woman propaganda as part of their rabid campaign to eliminate women’s reproductive rights. An example of this occurred just prior to the March 30 Indiana House vote on a bill restricting abortions. State Rep. Eric Turner outrageously charged that women would falsify incidents of rape or incest to obtain procedures. The ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy passed, with no rape or incest exceptions.

Women in motion to defend rights

These attacks shouldn’t be viewed in isolation. Part of the ruling class’s offensive against working and poor people’s rights, they occur as governments at all levels are laying siege to “entitlement programs” allegedly to make up for budget deficits. Family planning and other health care, childcare, public housing and food stamp programs — all necessities for low-income women and their families — are being axed as banks and corporations get billions of dollars, the super-rich get away with not paying taxes, and the Pentagon’s budget swells.

The government is carrying out a war on women, putting the worst burdens on low-income women during an economic crisis, limiting options, and creating more obstacles for them. Those most harmed by legal restrictions and cutbacks in reproductive health care services are young, working-class and low-income women, those from African-American, Latina and other oppressed communities, and rural residents.

More measures are coming, as the ultra-right is hell-bent on overturning women’s reproductive rights. Yet they are not proceeding unchallenged; fightbacks are being organized in every state. Progressive forces have stopped some regressive laws and prevented reactionaries from shutting down women’s health clinics in several states.

Pro-choice organizations are legally challenging restrictive laws, while they pressure state legislators. On April 7, a Pro-Choice Lobby Day in Washington, D.C., will pressure Congress not to vote the next day to defund Planned Parenthood and other vital programs for low-income women.

Women workers are in motion now to defend their rights. They won’t take these attacks without a struggle. It wouldn’t be surprising if women start occupying state Capitol buildings, as Wisconsin public sector workers did, to say NO to these assaults on their basic rights.