The Beginning of the End? Only with Inaction

3/12, by Leah
Fishbein, OxyConscious (progressive student’s activist group) leader and WCW
organizer at Occidental College

It has
begun. The abolishment of a woman’s right to choose has become a reality in South
Dakota.  Governor Mike Rounds has signed into law a bill that completely
eliminates a woman’s ability to seek an abortion unless there is undeniable
evidence that the mother will die during childbirth.  This is the only
exception.  The law does not provide for victims of rape or incest, let
alone those women who simply cannot afford to have another child or whose birth
control has failed.  (That is, if we have access to birth control and the
morning after pill for much longer).  This means that somewhere, a
13-year-old girl will be forced to carry her father’s baby to term; a woman
will conceive a child whose biological father forced himself into her body; a
doctor will be imprisoned for carrying out an abortion on a woman who could no
longer feed the four children she was already raising on her own in, on the
streets.

And less
threatening, less immediately scary, awful and controversial as a human product
of the violent, despicable rape act — but still very real and threatening, as
well as being a fundamentally fascist idea — is the possibility of forced
motherhood for those of us who simply choose not to bear children. While these
examples of rape and incest, of health problems and economic powerlessness
horrify us, we must also remember the direction that this regime is taking us
in. This is a direction in which the fundamental right to abortion services as
well as access to contraception and family planning services is denied to every
single woman in this country. We will ALL become slaves to our bodies and to
chance if the South Dakota ban is upheld.

This law
was mandated by a white male who says, “Abortion is wrong and we should do
everything we can to save lives,” the irony of which never ceases to amaze
me.  Those in power seem incredibly concerned for the rights of what is
effectively a clump of cells in early pregnancy when they are sending a
generation of youth abroad to be killed in the most gruesome ways in an
illegal, preemptive war.  What about the lives of those who are living and
breathing?  What about caring for those hundreds of thousands of unwanted
children in the United States?  Or providing education and other forms of
support for an entire nation of children, left behind by an oppressive economic
system, racism and a series of governments (especially the current regime)
whose only interests are profit motive and catering to the elite that support
them (and their criminal agenda)?

Statements
made by Democrats and pro-choice organizations seem to hide or ignore the
realities of what is happening in our country. That is a reality in which very
powerful governmental, financial and theocratic force not working to save
lives, but to destroy them. These are the lives of all women, who the Christian
fundamentalists and their governmental counterparts would like to see dragged
back to the days of second-class citizenship. Many of our nation’s leaders, and
their fundamentalist advisors, accept and openly promote the idea of women as a
silenced majority, getting back in line, back into traditional domesticity and
servitude and, subsequently, away from the battleground concerning systems of
oppression, sexism and gender related violence (among others). We must remember
that this ban and challenge to Roe is not only to deny women control over their
bodies but also to deny women respect, their basic freedoms and opportunities
(for economic success, for social interaction, for workforce integration, for
sex and gender related justice). The pro-life movement openly distorts science
in an attempt to shock teenagers into abstinence, reacts violently to
pro-choice doctors and supporters and will only settle for a norm of
heterosexual marriage in which husbands are the financial and spiritual leaders
for their traditional, stay at home wives.[i]

The
inaction of the Democrats and some pro-choice organizations is
disheartening,
and only proves the point that there will be no savior from the
Democratic Party, or from the liberal elite. Several pro-choice groups
have sent mass
emails asking for donations this week in light of the recent bans. What
we need
now is not just financial, and it most certainly does not involve
financing the
campaign of Democrats who are not only inactive but in many cases
regressive.
It does not involve waiting in the wings while the head of the
Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee, Charles Schumer, openly recruits
anti-Roe
candidates for 2006 to desperately try and chip away at a Republican
majority.
We must openly advocate for our demands, not staking our hopes and
dreams on
politicians who cater to a Christian fundamentalist morality. The
pro-choice
movement has done so much in advocating for and bringing about a
liberal, safe
and more equal society. Now it must stand up for what it has worked for
before
Roe, among other things, slips between its fingers.

While the
calls from pro-choice organizations are positive, and the actions they are
advocating are critical and urgent, we must keep in mind our ultimate goal. We
will not win the fight against this powerful regime battle by battle. The World
Can’t Wait must immediately forge strong alliances with pro-choice
organizations, calling for and creating a political situation in which we
refute the claims of politicians such as Democratic National Committee Chairman
Howard Dean. Following the news of the S. Dakota ban, Dean made the following
statement: “We can all agree that abortion should be rare, but it should
also be safe and legal. This difficult personal health care decision should be
made by a woman, in consultation with her physician, and not by politicians.”[ii]
Statements like these promote abortion with apology, which we will not accept.
This is a fundamental right that women can claim to their won bodies, and has
nothing to do with someone else’s morality. We must build this movement without
compromise or concession, things that so many politicians are, sadly, undebatably
linked to.

In an
MSNBC article, writer Tom Curry puts it clearly when he writes, “Democrats
now hold only 44 seats in the Senate, the fewest since 1931, so they’re seeking
the strongest candidates they can, even if such candidates are doctrinally
abhorrent to abortion rights groups”.[iii]
His aptly titled article, “Democrats woo abortion opponents for
Senate,” demonstrates that in terms of electoral politics, our only choice
is no choice. Candidates such as Bob Casey, who openly opposes abortion rights,
and anti-Roe Rep. Jim Langevin, who would run against pro-Roe Republican Sen.
Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, are far from a breath of fresh air. These men
are the one and the same with the Bush administration.

Like the
Bush administration, they would not hesitate to move very quickly in dragging
women back to the dark ages of back-alley abortion, and to the status of
second-class citizens. The future the Bush administration is moving America
towards is one in which women are incubators, slaves to their bodies, living
under the martial law of their husbands. It is one in which little girls are
clueless as to their own bodies, coming out of school systems which teach them
nothing about contraception, abortion or safe sex. It is a future in which our
government sponsors abstinence-only, anti-condom programs in African countries
with raging epidemics, taking part in what is in effect genocide.[iv]
This future is becoming a reality.

We see
this reality in bills being pressed through state governments across the
country. The current Mississippi bill will ban abortion unless a woman’s life
is in danger (or unless she is a victim of rape or incest). It has passed
through the state’s House of Representatives, and the Senate will vote on it
next. Republican governor Haley Barbour promised to sign the bill into law.
With two anti-abortion bills filed last week in Missouri and plans for
legislation in Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, West Virginia and Kentucky, now is the
time for something new, something on a level that we have not yet seen. It will
involve massive mobilizations of progressive, liberal, radical, moderate and
conservative people from every niche of society. It will involve direct action,
including the “Bloody Monday” action that people across the country have
used to agitate. But most of all, it will involve a pervasive level of
consciousness and urgency on the behalf of the millions we have yet to reach
out to. This means dialogue, it means conveying a stronger sense of urgency,
and it means open expressions of outrage and hope for a different future. This
level will only be reached by escalating our tactics dramatically and building
our movement and its base, and these mobilizations will take time and energy
and faith. But IT MUST BE DONE.

Only with
inaction will we fail. If we develop stronger faith in the masses, in the
majority which support a woman’s right to choose, we can and will take our
country back and build something new, positive and constructive, full of real
freedoms and of equity. Right over might has had many victories, and it will
prevail again. But in order to begin truly changing the future of this country
we need to examine the widespread disbelief concerning what is happening. The
oft-expressed feeling that the courts will never ban abortion has been
effectively invalidated. The recent bans, the new appointees to the Supreme
Court, the move to take away rights and access to contraception, the
abstinence-only programs in schools, the challenges to Roe, and especially the
dramatic increase to  federal funding
for all of these activities(all of these factors are proof that our government
is systematically moving, in a fascistic way, to criminalize a widely accepted
lifestyle. This lifestyle, accepted and practiced by the majority of people in
our country, values and openly celebrates the technological advances that
contraception stems from and the freedoms that those advances mean for men and
women alike.

There will
be no magic pendulum swing. This systematic move towards theocracy, in which
sex is solely for procreation and women are no longer men’s equals, will not be
stopped or “voted out.” The debate is being restructured around the
rhetoric of the far right and the theocrats. The Democrats are, effectively,
demobilizing people by compromising to participate in such a debate, making
concessions at every turn but still promising us the best. We must press people
across the country to answer this question: When will you draw the line? What
does it take for you to start fighting for what’s right, for what you so deeply
believe in? Holding liberal sentiments does not affect change. Action
does.  What is being done to women in the US and across the globe by this
regime cannot and will not be carried out in our names. The inaction we are
witnessing on the behalf of so many people is a product of disbelief, of fear
and of complete misguidance from a corrupt media and an administration lying
through their teeth to push this theocracy they so badly want. Reach out to
these people any way you can, and stand up for what is true and right before it
is too late.

We must reach out to those people, we must
communicate with them on new levels, we must let them know that the 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 politics of surrender
being pressed by the Democrats will not be accepted, and in fact must be
reversed. We want abortion without apology, without concession or permission,
without our media and our supposed advocates constantly mentioning the tragic
nature of abortion while vaguely supporting a woman’s right to choose. From
contraception and abortion services to sex education, we must fight for the
rights of every woman, not just for the privileged few who can afford these
services. We must not and will not compromise. We want our bodies back,
and for this reason, we cannot concede ground, much less wait. Drive out this
misogynistic, anti-choice, Christian fundamentalist regime and send their whole
program with them!