Attacks on Abortion Rights Continue

Opponents of abortion have targeted insurance plans subsidized by the recent health-insurance bill as the latest in a series of assaults on female reproductive rights. In New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, groups opposed to legal abortion forced the Obama administration to clarify that the government funded health-insurance programs – those intended to provide for “high-risk” individuals – do not allow for elective abortion coverage.  This struggle has been under the guise of a hue and cry over “public funding” of abortion.

An amendment sponsored by Bart Stupak (D) of Michigan and Joseph R. Pitts (R) of Pennsylvania for inclusion in the “Affordable Health Care for Americans Act,” prohibits using federal funds to “pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan.”  This includes coverage of abortion in any case other than rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother.  This provision passed in order to pacify Right-wing members of both the Democratic and Republican parties, each of which opposes a woman’s right to choose and have insisted for years that there be no public funding for abortions.  These plans are supposed to provide workarounds to cover abortion (at the cost of the insured), but in reality it is turning out to be a denial of any abortion coverage in subsidized programs.  Women, moreover, affected by this are those who have serious medical conditions and likely already have high medical bills and less ability to pay for procedures.

These attacks come as judges blocked harsh anti-abortion laws in Oklahoma and Nebraska.  The Oklahoma Bill would require women to go through the process of an ultrasound and look at a picture of the embryo or fetus before an elective abortion can take place.  This is a clear act of emotional blackmail for women already in a vulnerable situation.  Even more outrageous was the proposal in Nebraska to make a mental-health screening mandatory before the procedure.  Federal judges blocked both laws from going into effect.  These obviously humiliating processes intend to deter women from going through an elective procedure and are part of a sustained campaign to effectively halt abortions by the “death of a thousand cuts,” a series of obstacles and hurdles that stop short of an outright ban.

State judiciaries put a halt on the harshest of such attacks, but the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, an heir to the infamous “Hyde Amendment” that has been passed by every Congress since 1976 to restrict certain federal funds from going toward abortions, has made state-subsidized health plans the latest battleground in this fight.  The Democrats, moreover, who betrayed pro-abortion lobby groups like NARAL and NOW in accepting the health-care bill with the amendment attached have acquiesced to this Right-wing pressure and are creating plans that effectively deny women any coverage for abortions.

What do socialists say about abortion rights?

Despite all the self-righteous moralizing coming from Right-wing pundits about abortion, the heart of the question is not morality but the continued subjection of women to the roles capitalism assigns them.  Denying ready access to abortion invariably forces women into “traditional” roles, ones providing domestic labor, producing the next generation of workers, and all other such work that goes unpaid.  Working-class women are among the most affected by the attacks that target federal funding, and this means forcing them into a doubly exploited situation – underpaid on the job and doing unpaid work at home.

In the United States, there is an additional dimension to the debate:  it is a rallying cry for both capitalist parties.  The Republicans have become the party that loudly proclaims itself anti-choice and they are the force spearheading most of the attacks.  They chip away at abortion without going so far as to ban it and so draw religious “social conservatives” along with them.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are the supposed defenders of abortion rights but they have mostly fallen silent on the issue.  They have failed to make even the most modest defense of funding for fear that it could compromise their health-care bill – which is in itself a gift to the insurance companies – and have proven ineffective in stopping state-level attacks.  Each uses abortion to bring out its supporters yet neither honors its claim.  All the while, each party uses its stance on abortion to convince workers to vote for a capitalist party standing against their own clear class interests.

Free access to abortion is necessary if women are to have genuine control over their bodies, their sexuality, and, therefore, their very own lives.  There must be no false sense of womanly “responsibility” or venerating the family foisted by capitalist society upon the shoulders of women, and there is no reason for anyone other than the woman and a competent doctor of her choosing to be involved in such a choice.

We call for free abortion on demand with no forced sterilizations or abortions.  It is only by having control over their own fertility that women can be masters of their own lives and not forced into the roles that capitalism assigns them.  These choices must be free and clear of coercion of any sort.  We reject any limitations put on this right, whether this is due to the term of pregnancy, the age of the woman having the procedure done, or any other artificial barriers.