Agenda to a HALT!
It’s 2006 and we are very
close to losing Roe. Fifteen states have
criminal bans on the books that would outlaw abortion with few exceptions, and Ohio legislators are considering a law that will
prohibit all abortions with no exceptions, even if the woman’s life is
at stake.
This movement and all
people who care about the fundamental rights of women are facing a juncture,
and which way we go will decide the future for generations. The pouring of all hopes and energies into
the Democratic Party that has sacrificed the issue of abortion to “winning” in
the mid-term elections leaves us with this question: at what point will we
decide to really fight and at what point does it become too late?
The women of the
pro-choice movement must resolve to take a radical departure from the strategy
that is in large part responsible for the ground we have lost. Funneling
all our energies, money and imagination into elections and candidates and a
political process that is howlingly disconnected and at odds with people’s
needs, objectives, interests and principles has to be roundly and decisively
rejected.
Unless there’s a drastic
shift of strategy from accepting
“what’s possible” within the official politics of this country
that are pitching far right, unless we bust through the confines that are
squeezing the life out of what we have going for us the most – the initiative
of millions of women who are looking for a way out and asking to be called into
action – we are going to lose it all, and the agenda of the
Operation Save America lunatics now moving to shut down the last abortion
clinic in Mississippi will be the handmaid’s tale we will actually be living.
When you have a situation
where even the nine pro-choice women Democrats in the Senate support
Pennsylvania’s Robert Casey Jr., an anti-choice, pro-war, anti-stem cell
research Democrat, because, in their words, his election is “critical to
our efforts of regaining the majority in the U.S. Senate,” isn’t it time
for something drastically and radically different?
There is still time, but
the clock is ticking. If we treat Roe as already gone we will certainly lose.
We cannot settle for a defensive strategy of fighting attacks on abortion state
by state. And what is most important, if the whole agenda of unlimited war,
torture, massive spying, attacks on gays and women and the destruction of basic
rights is not rejected and the Bush regime driven from power, it will become
increasing impossible to stop any single outrage. The entire Bush agenda and fascist remaking
of society have to be brought to a HALT.
World Can’t Wait is
calling on people to reject accommodating to and settling for what has become a
killing logic. What begins as something too dreadful to contemplate becomes
today’s compromise position that is then signed into law and given a bipartisan
legislative mandate and legitimacy. The point is not, voting or not. Our
point is that if our struggle remains confined within the parameters of the
elections, we will lose – even if the Democrats win.
World Can’t Wait is
calling on people to step outside of these confines – to find your sharpest
tongues to say the whole political discourse around this is WRONG and has to be
radically altered in the way political discourse has always been changed: by
what is initially a minority of society stepping up and stepping out in massive
enough numbers to create an entirely different discourse and political dynamic
than the one officially permitted. The passivity and demobilization of the
pro-choice and women’s movement needs to be swiftly reversed. And the money we
need must be found by going directly to the people, instead of allowing
ourselves to be limited by the purse strings of those who want to muzzle us.
Public opinion on the war
did not change because people voted for Democrats – it changed in spite of
it. Massive political action in the
streets put out an example and a position that the actual reality of the war
soon confirmed for millions of people who were not yet convinced. What would have happened had we not been
there in the fall of 2002? Would people be drawing the same conclusions? Would opinion polls on the war be what they
are now? Would dissent have been completely silenced without millions of people
refusing to “watch what you say” and instead going up against that kind of
intimidation in massive resistance, saying “No! Your war is wrong and unjust,
and you will not prosecute it in our name?
Would GI’s today be able to say, “I refuse” without this?
The only thing that has a
chance of beating back the assault on abortion, on derailing the assertion of
patriarchal morality and authority being made into law, of stopping the
dangerous fascist remaking of society that is undergirding an endless war for
empire, is to put all our energies, post haste, into truly massive mobilization
and resistance.
On October 5th
World Can’t Wait is calling for a day of mass mobilization to break the
paralysis that still grips too much of American political life and to say Enough
– Bring this to a halt! Drive Out the Bush Regime. We are calling on people
to walk out of schools, and off their jobs, to stop shopping and close their
shops, and to assemble in massive demonstrations.
Be part of taking this
momentous step. It is time to pool our
energies and resources to take responsibility to really change the course of
history. There is no other way the political
will of the people will be heard this fall – no other way it will not be
frittered away and dissipated.
As the World Can’t Wait
Call says: The future is
unwritten. Which one we get is up to us.
Drafted by Mary Lou Greenberg, an activist in the women’s liberation
movement in the 1960s who has defended women’s clinics and abortion
providers across the country. She received a Susan B. Anthony Award for
grassroots activism from the NYC Chapter of the National Organization
for Women in 2001. She works with World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush
Regime and is a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA-NYC
Branch.
Joined by:
Debra Sweet, National
Coordinator, The World Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime (www.worldcantwait.org)
Merle Hoffman,
Founder/President of Choices Women’s Medical and Mental Health Center, Long
Island City, NY, est. 1971 as one of the first ambulatory abortion centers;
co-founder of the National Abortion Federation (NAF) and founder of the NY
Pro-Choice Coalition; publisher/editor-in-chief of On the Issues: the Progressive Women’s Quarterly
Eleanor J. Bader,
co-author, Targets of Hatred: Anti-Abortion
Terrorism; contributor to Z,
Library Journal, Lillith, NY Law Journal and The Brooklyn Rail
Rosemary Candelario,
Pro-choice activist, co-founder of the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund,
formerly of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the Abortion
Access Project, and the Reproductive Freedom Taskforce of Refuse & Resist.
Elaine Brower, World
Can’t Wait-Drive Out the Bush Regime spokesperson, anti-war activist and mother
of a Marine stationed in Iraq
Lucinda Marshall,
Founder, Feminist Peace Network (www.feministpeacenetwork.org)
Rev. Monica Corsaro,
Co-Covener Religious Coalition for Equality, President of Washington State
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, serving as Ecumenical Campus
Minister at University of Washington, ordained elder of United
Methodist Church Pacific Northwest Conference
Carolyn R. Swift,
Professor Emerita, English Department, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI
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Appendix to: A Call to
Action for
the Women’s Movement And Everyone Who Cares
About Women’s Lives
Food for Thought – Lessons
from History
The Bush regime and its
whole agenda, including an end to the right to abortion, will not be stopped by
the fall elections. It will not be stopped by pouring money and energy down the
drain of Democratic Party candidates. A case in point: The April 2004 March for
Women’s Lives mobilized over a million people to march in DC for reproductive
freedom. The energy and passion of the crowd to defend women’s rights was
inspiring. But the take-home message to “get out the vote” was disarming,
demobilizing and ultimately, demoralizing when the campaign brought more
compromise and conciliation by the Democratic Party. People came away thinking
no one in power was listening, and they were right.
Hilary Clinton was a big
star at the April rally. But by January 2005, in opposition to overwhelming
sentiment at the march, she was urging people to find “common ground”
with anti-choice forces to reduce the need for abortion. She said, as her
husband did, that abortion should be “rare, and said that it represents
“a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women.”
This kind of giving ground
and legitimacy to the moral and political position of a hard core within the
Republican Party that, once fed, will not stop at banning abortion, is
deadly. They are now demanding the
banning of contraception and accurate, science-based sex education. You cannot
seek “common ground” with religious fundamentalists. The outlook and active agenda of the assault
on abortion, on birth control, and the argument against gay marriage is that
marriage is for procreation and procreation is the only purpose for sex. If you don’t believe it, look at the written
decisions by the State Courts in NY on gay marriage. There is no mythical
center position acceptable to theocrats from Flip Benham to Antonin Scalia who
want to see the Bible as law.
The truth is that abortion
on demand is absolutely necessary if women are to be free and have the ability
to determine their life’s course, and it is in the interests of everyone who wants
a better world to enable half of humanity to play a full role in all of
society. A woman who does not have reproductive choice has no more freedom than
a slave. Abortion should not be “rare,” but available and accessible
to every woman who wants or needs to end a pregnancy and without apology.
But “rare” is
now the accepted Democratic Party mantra, and it’s paving the way for “never,”
as demonstrated in the current Senate race in Pennsylvania where Bob Casey,
Jr., an anti-choice, pro-war, anti-stem cell research Democrat, is running
against an anti-choice, pro-war, anti-stem cell research Republican. Senator
Charles Schumer, the top Senate recruiter for the Democrats, forced a
pro-choice woman to drop out of the race in favor of Casey. Schumer has called
defending abortion “a game” that the Democrats “can’t afford to
play” any longer. Even if the Democrats were to succeed, we will lose.
Women’s rights leaders
rightly called this out as “an effort by party leaders to build a
so-called ‘bigger tent’ at the expense of women’s rights.” But the
solution they urged, threatening Democrats with the loss of women’s votes, is
nowhere close to what’s needed to derail the unrelenting assault on fundamental
rights by this regime.
As World Can’t Wait (www.worldcantwait.org)
states in its Call:
…There is not going
to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our
hopes and energies into ‘leaders’ who tell us to seek common ground with
fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and
actually serves to demobilize people…
The point is this:
history is full of examples where people who had right on their side fought
against tremendous odds and were victorious. And it is also full of examples of
people passively hoping to wait it out, only to get swallowed up by a horror
beyond what they ever imagined. The
future is unwritten. Which one we get is up to us.
Mary Lou Greenberg, July
2006