Part 1: Moves to Outlaw Abortion: A Leap in Patriarchy and Theocratic Domination
Revolution #33, February 5, 2006, posted at revcom.us
Speaking at the National Security Agency on Wednesday, January 25,
George W. Bush said, “We live in a momentous time) we are living in
historic times. . . we have a chance to make decisions today that will
help shape the direction of events for years to come.”
How Bush intends to do that is dramatically concentrated in the
elevation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. This two-part series
will examine what Alito’s elevation will mean for the position of women
in society and for Bush’s program of unrestrained executive power.
*****
Perhaps the most powerful testimony in the hearings leading up to
Alito’s confirmation came from Kate Michelman, the former president of
NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League). Michelman described her
ordeal at a time when “therapeutic abortions” were available in some
states under exceptional circumstances, but abortion was not yet
recognized as a basic right, protected by the Constitution. It’s worth
quoting at length:
“In 1969, I was a young, stay-at-home mother of three little girls,
a practicing Catholic who had accepted the Church’s teachings about
birth control and abortion. The notion that abortion might be an issue
I would face in my own life never occurred to me until the day my
husband suddenly abandoned our family. In time, with nothing to live
on, we were forced onto welfare. Soon after he left, I discovered I was
pregnant. I knew instinctively that another child would turn a crisis
into a catastrophe.
“After a long period of searching–of balancing my moral and
religious values about the newly developing life with my
responsibilities to my three young daughters–I decided to have an
abortion….
“Because this all occurred prior to Roe [the Supreme Court decision
legalizing abortion] I was legally prevented from acting privately on
my decision. I was compelled to submit to two interrogations before an
all-male panel of doctors. They probed every aspect of my private
life–from what kind of sex life my husband and I had to whether I was
capable of dressing my children in the morning. Eventually, they gave
their permission. I had been admitted to the hospital and was awaiting
the procedure when a nurse arrived to tell me that state law imposed
yet another humiliating burden. The government required me to obtain my
husband’s consent. I was forced to leave the hospital, find where he
was living and ask him to give me his permission….
“…I do not tell this story to ask your sympathy. It was a
humiliating experience, but one that also awakened me to a lifetime of
activism devoted to ensuring no other woman ever would be required to
endure such humiliation. I tell you this story because we stand at the
threshold of millions of women–women doing their very best to do what
is right for themselves and their families–once more facing the
dreadful choice between the degradation of the review board and the
danger of the back alley. This is neither hyperbole nor hype. It is the
simple, demonstrable reality of the situation.”
Think for a minute about what Kate Michelman describes. It is
nothing less than males, singly and in groups, exercising what was then
their legal right to determine whether a woman will have a
child, in forms sanctioned and enforced by the power of the state.
Imagine yourself in her shoes. Even though in this case she was
literally “given permission” to have an abortion, the men involved and
the approval procedure itself made sure that Kate Michelman would be
humiliated and forced to feel her own powerlessness in the depth of her
spirit. And that was in a supposedly “enlightened” area of the
country–in most places even that option was denied. Women
were either forced to bear unwanted children or sent to search for
illegal and dangerous back-alley abortions.
As a lawyer in the Reagan administration, Alito openly vowed his aim
to wipe out the right to abortion. He developed the strategy of first
severely limiting and then overturning that right altogether. As a
lower court judge, Alito actually argued in favor of a law that would
have forced women to again inform their husbands if they wanted an
abortion, as Kate Michelman had to; his argument was not upheld then,
but now he is slated to sit on the Supreme Court. And from this
position of power he will be fighting not only to impose the
humiliations described above, but the horrific experience of back-alley
abortions involving the dangers of mutilation and death.
Women, of course, are still tremendously oppressed, and even after
the right to abortion was won–through very sharp struggle–they have
continued to be treated as the property of men in the social relations
of this system. But to return to the days described by Kate Michelman
would mark a tremendous step backward, greatly intensifying that
oppression, and would be reason enough to mount a huge political
struggle to drive out this regime and change the direction of society.
Open Threats from Puffed-Up Theocrats
But the Bush regime intends to go much further.
Bush makes much of his desire to not only change the law, but
institute a so-called “culture of life” founded on Biblical values. To
give just one telling example of these values, the creation tale of the
Bible blames women for the “original sin” that caused the “fall of
man.” This is why, we are told, women endure pain during childbirth and
this also supposedly justifies the subjugation of women by men and
their treatment as objects of slavery and sexual plunder, which goes on
with God’s approval and indeed at his behest throughout the Old
Testament. This same “original sin” is upheld in the Christian New
Testament in 1 Timothy 2:11-15, where Paul reiterates that the
subordination of women to men is “God’s will” and says that a woman can
redeem herself for Eve’s supposed transgression only “through her
child-bearing,” and he even says that women should not dare to “teach
men” but must “learn in quietness with all subjection.” [From the
American Standard version of the Bible; for more on this, go to Bobavakian.net and his talks on religion.]
The core social base of the Bush regime insists that these archaic
and reactionary views be made the basis of law. And these fanatics not
only intend to fully outlaw abortion in every case, but to take revenge
on those who may have had or performed an abortion. The president of
March for Life, which organized the triumphant January 23 rally
celebrating the nomination of Alito to the Court, predicted to the
crowd “that the United States would hold the equivalent of Nuremburg
trials for âfeminist abortionists,'” and called “support [!] for a
woman’s right to choose âcrimes against humanity.'” Her words,
according this New York Times account, “were met with strong applause.”
Please note that the chief defendants at the World War II war crimes
trials at Nuremburg were executed. Note as well that the assassination
of abortion providers has already been called for by elements of this
movement under the rubric of Nuremberg, and that several providers have
been outright murdered, others severely wounded and many more living
under daily death threats.
This is the future represented by Alito’s elevation. This is the
future being pushed by the current regime, with the full power of the
state, every day. This is not a future that we can accept; nor is there
any “common ground” to be found with those fighting for it. This is a
future we must resist. Now.
Next week: The All-powerful President: Torturer-in-Chief
Alito became known during these hearings as a champion of the
doctrine called the “unitary executive.” This doctrine elevates the
executive branch above the other two branches of government and, as
interpreted by Alito and those in the Bush Administration, it enables
the president to act without any legal restraint.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolution Online
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