-Sunsara Taylor
(written after watching the PBS special which can be watched here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/clinic/ )
Last
night’s PBS special on the last abortion clinic in Mississippi was
harrowing. Over and over, abortion rights advocates and providers
talked of conditions for women that already are comparable to those
before Roe V. Wade was passed: women unable to access abortions, forced
to leave the state, uneducated about birth control, unable to afford
services, forced to have children they do not want.
About 75%
of children born in the Delta region there are to single women. Girls
are required to get permission not just from one parent, but from two.
The last standing clinic is besieged daily by the throngs of
praying/preying zombies.
I am sick of the notion that it’s not
‘politically correct’ to compare what is happening in this country to
what happened in Nazi Germany. I am sorry ( when they showed the clip
of Bush announcing the ban on ‘partial birth abortion’ all I could
think of was Hitler ( of his posture of moral superiority at the cost
of millions of lives, of the fanfare, of the populace that acquiesced
with evil. And, Hitler DID outlaw abortion.
Recently the owner
of the women’s clinic I used to work at died. He was a wonderful and
fiery man ( motivated by a very vivid memory of what women went through
before they had access to safe abortions. He was a fighter. He hated
the war on Iraq. He hated the fanatical Catholics who protested every
single day outside his clinic. And he loved the women who would get in
their face. He gave me an award the first week I was there because I
made off with the pair of baby-shoes that hung on the anti-women
protesters’ gruesome display each day.
As much as he will be
missed, he is but one part of a greater hole being left unfilled. There
are all too few doctors. There are all too many legal restrictions.
There is all together too much momentum, too much power, to high level
a position of the fanatical fascists who would permanently remove
abortion and birth control from this society and around the world and
punish those who dared provide these services.
In light of all this, I want to speak to three things I have heard WAY TOO OFTEN from people who should know better:
1.
I was told last week, while doing an interview on a feminist radio
show, that, ‘Of course, abortion is not the only issue that affects
women.’
2. At a party a few days ago a young woman explained
to me that ‘Feminism really did go too far, was too extreme, because I
remember when my older sister felt guilty for wanting to stay home with
her baby.’
3. And, again in the last week, I got emails from
the major pro-choice groups promising that if I just emailed ‘my’
senators, we could protect ‘choice’ in the face of the new Supreme
Court pick.
So, here goes:
1. Of course, there are many things which affect women. Most things do, we are half of humanity.
But,
there are some things which are central and defining to the role women
will play and mostly they center up around that which makes us distinct
from the other half of humanity ( our role in reproduction.
Of
course war, poverty, discrimination all disproportionately impact
women, but while we should definitely concern ourselves with all of
these issues and more, they impact women disproportionately because
women are oppressed, not because they are central and defining to the
role women play in society. For instance, even when countries are not
at war women are still oppressed and even in wealthy homes women are
beaten.
And, no, the widespread horrors of battery and rape are
not lost on me. But ending all this is exactly bound up with the
overall struggle to liberate women, including by fighting for our
fundamental right to control our own bodies and reproduction.
In
reality, saying that abortion is not the only women’s issue is making
the argument that we shouldn’t focus so much attention on this issue.
It is based on either the illusion that you can make progress for women
without preserving and destigmatizing abortion and birth control or
based on willful ignorance. Take your pick ( neither is worth doing.
2. Okay, lest start with the basics: NO. Feminism did not go too far.
Sorry,
to the woman I met at this party, pull back the lens just a little bit,
would ya? I know this society teaches people to think only about
themselves, but look around you for a minute.
When were women
EVER on a societal level told that they should not make staying home
with kids their number one aspiration? When has that model EVER let up?
Sure, maybe you lived in a somewhat ‘enlightened’ enclave. Maybe your
parents and those immediately around you didn’t tell you that your
biggest priority should be kids ( but this in no way was enforced by
the state, legislated, propagated by the major means of communication
and culture. And for most women, this message never reached.
I
am not infatuated with everything the women’s liberation movement ever
did, either, but not because it went too far, but because in the main
it did not go far enough. We still live in a patriarchal society
because we still live in a class society ( and that won’t change short
of revolution.
So, yes, women do have undue burdens and double
standards put on us ( but get over this notion of how you were
oppressed by the women’s movement because you want the right to stay
home and raise kids. That has always remained not only an option for
those who can afford it, but it is the main promoted and upheld option
for most women in society – which probably has a lot to do with why you
and your sister have been conditioned to long for that role.
Kids
are great and we need a society that doesn’t pit living a full life as
part of larger society against the ability to raise critically
thinking, happy, healthy kids ( but doing so requires going further:
ending job discrimination, breaking down gender divisions around
housework and child-rearing, achieving affordable and collective
child-care, transforming social attitudes. All of this ( and much more
( has been done in socialist societies and much more waits to be done.
You want to get out of a lose-lose situation ( then, as the
Revolutionary Communist Party says, ‘Break the Chains! Unleash the Fury
of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!’ Don’t piss and whine about
the good aspects of what our parent’s generation struggled so hard for.
3. Okay, sorry NARAL, I am going to call you out by name. Your
letter writing campaign wasn’t going to and didn’t stop Judge Roberts.
It is not going to stop Alito. And living in a society with its laws
retooled along those theocratic lines is NOT something I am sitting
around sending emails and waiting for.
Recognizing the irony,
I wrote an email to NARAL complaining about their insistence that their
base be politically passive in the face of the remaking of the Supreme
Court by only sending emails instead of pouring into the streets to
turn things around. In it I said, ‘Look, even you aren’t going to be
moved by an email I send, I doubt you’ll even respond. So, why should I
expect more from someone who doesn’t even claim to be a fighter for
abortion rights like those you want me to email?’ Of course, I heard
nothing from them.
SO, WHAT TO DO?
I happen to know
that there still are millions and millions of women and men in this
society who would be willing to fight to prevent us from going
backwards for women ( and on all the other fronts society is being
dragged backwards on (prayer in school, torture, napalm, anti-gay
legislation, attacks on evolution, etc).
At last week’s launch
of a movement to Drive Out the Bush Regime I was impressed by how deep
a response I got from the young Black and Latina high school students
when I spoke about the dangers of losing abortion rights. I told the
truth ( that the threat to women and abortion rights alone is reason
enough to drive out the Bush regime and nothing short of this would do,
and they went wild.
I’ve heard people say it is unrealistic or
unspecific to want to drive out the Bush regime ( but it is absurd and
unrealistic and willfully ignorant to think that anything short of
that, and the major social struggle and upheaval that will require, and
the major impact on people’s thinking that that will bring along with
it, will even come close to doing what is needed.
As the Call
for the World Can’t Wait ( Drive Out the Bush Regime says, ‘That which
you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn ( or be forced
( to accept.’
This is true. And most people who used to know better are learning to accept a count-down to the end of Roe-V.-Wade.
F that.
Drive Out the Bush Regime.