Report from DC on Roe v. Wade anniversary: Taking on the “March for Forced Motherhood!”

I arrived in DC yesterday midday with an impressive group of mostly young women. Some of them I have known for a while, both through the movement for revolution and through the more recent efforts initiating a new movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy: the Enslavement and Degradation of Women. One was a young woman who I had just met the day before up at a clinic in the South Bronx where there was a march commemorating Roe v. Wade that made its way to a fake clinic (a “Crisis Pregnancy Center”) where there was a speak-out against the lies and guilt and lack of medical help that is distributed at those centers.

Ten minutes into lunch we were neck deep in a discussion spanning the controversies which surrounded Slutwalk, the origins of the oppression of women, how to understand the sex industry (could it EVER be “empowering for women” or is the point to get to a world where no one is commodified and women are not oppressed), questions surrounding revolution and socialism/communism, and so much more. Probably some of what we wrangled with will surface in future posts... but this morning (just as yesterday during the discussion) I cannot go as far as I'd like because there are places to be!

This morning we are heading to the Supreme Court to Stand Up for Abortion and Birth Control! There should be some tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of anti-abortion protesters who will be streaming through the capital. Previously, I wrote about why they would be better called the “March for Forced Motherhood and Female Enslavement.”

Last evening at BusBoys and Poets, we had a very rich program and discussion. Students came out from the nearby universities, including a number of current or former Catholic students. One young woman from Catholic University, where a lot of the anti-abortion protesters stay while in from out of town, courageously stood up to them by herself. She wore her pro-choice t-shirt and held a pro-choice sign as they streamed through her school. This morning she is going to have a much bigger crew with her as many of the folks who came to the program volunteered to join her.

Also, a small core of the Occupy folks from DC apparently went into one of the anti-abortion youth events and pulled off a “mic-check” where they spoke for a while about why women need the right to decide for themselves about their reproductive lives.

During the presentation I gave over dinner, one of the things I tried to lay out is how we have gotten into this situation where we keep losing ground on abortion and birth control. I took on the way that the bourgeois feminist movement (including the mainstream of the pro-choice movement) has totally subordinated itself to the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is a ruling class party which shares a lot of the same desires as the Republicans in terms of wanting to strengthen the patriarchal family at a time when “national unity” is both being challenged (due to the ongoing ideological effects of the 60's, the recent anti-war movement, the changes in the position of women, the influx of immigrants, the challenges to the patriarchal family posed by the LGBT struggles and traditional gender norms, and many other things) and is more needed than ever (at a time of an ongoing “War on Terror” and other global challenges to the empire). This overall unity in class interests is greater than their disagreements – real as those disagreements are – and it shapes the terms over which they struggle and over which they continually capitulate. As a ruling class party, the Democratics doesn't want the instability and upheaval that would be required to really take on the truly fascist and fanatical Christian fundamentalist anti-abortion movement.

As Richard Viguerie, an early architect of the anti-abortion movement, put it decades ago: “The abortion issue is the door through which many people come into conservative politics, but they don't stop there. Their convictions against abortion are like the first in a series of dominoes. Then we lead them to concern about sexual ethics and standards among young people. This leads to opposition to secular humanism. Then... we point out that secular humanism is identified as both the godfather and the royal road to socialism and communism which points the way to commitments to minimally regulated free enterprise at home and to aggressive foreign and military politics to counter the communist threat from Russia and its many surrogates.”

Obviously, the world has changed since that quote, but the strategic orientation laid by Viguerie explains a lot as to why the crazy Christian fascist lunatics didn't stay on the margins of society but were elevated and given major backing by ruling class forces starting with Reagan and continuing till today where they are now all throughout the halls of power, courts, high finance and military.

And, the Democrats, while differing over many of the details and approach, both don't want the kind of fight that comes from really taking that on and share the same basic outlook of strengthening and shoring up the homefront and national unity – including an increase on the patriarchal family and patriotism (and the two do go hand in hand!).

The mainstream pro-choice movement, by tying its sails to the Democratic Party, has taken their lead – and gone along with distancing itself from an unapologetic defense of abortion AND has stopped mobilizing people to really fight for abortion rights and instead mobilizes them to vote and give money to elections. They adopted Clinton's “safe, legal, rare” apologetics and defensiveness and then dropping the word “abortion” from almost anything they do. Go, for instance, and look at NARAL's homepage and you can't find the word abortion anywhere on the front page!

To really demonstrate just how terrible the direction of this “pro-choice movement” is – at a time of the greatest assault on abortion we've ever seen, building on all that has come before and escalating even further, the pro-choice movement called for a bullshit “Virtual March” on Washington (all the groups, NARAL, NOW, Planned Parenthood, Feminist Majority, etc. – together with the Supreme Sucker Up of Progressive Energies: MoveOn.org) where people do nothing but click a button “to prove to congress... that they will do nothing but click a button.” Ie: “Don't worry, keep compromising away women's lives!” A “Virtual March” would be fine, of course, if there were only a “virtual war on women” currently afoot.

I also spoke to the fact that resistance IS possible, but not by relying on the Democrats or the groups that have made themselves nothing more than an appendage to them. We must rely on ourselves – and the millions more who are sitting on the sidelines to act outside of the institutions and the political limits of the bourgeois political framework. To be in the streets declaring “Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!”

Many of the students were very eager to hear this and discuss, saying they felt there had been something wrong with the pro-choice movement and there was a need for something more radical. There is more to report on all this – but, as I said, I have to scoot out the door.

Before I do, I have to mention some of what else really inspired me. A woman I met some fifteen years ago who worked at one of the clinics in Brookline, Massachusettes where two women were killed by an anti-abortion gunman in the 90's came down. She looked incredible and it was wonderful to see her and hear her speak at the program. Heather Ault, of 4,000 years of Choice, is here with her beautiful banners. A man I met over the summer at the Summer of Trust, where we defended Dr. Carhart's clinic, is supporting all this. He is from one of the Unitarian churches and said he'd never been involved in or thought much about abortion until we came down over the summer. Now, he regularly escorts at the local clinics. The women of the Brevard, Florida NOW Chapter who were up here for the Summer of Trust have also come back again. So glad to be joined by this incredible crew. More to say later.

In the mean time – please give some money to this critical effort! It really will make an incredible impact both on this protest today AND on the ability to continue to do even more like it.

Donate: https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1170/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=5872

"Liberals have an Oedipal complex..."

“Liberals have an Oedipal complex: It’s not that they want to sleep with their mothers—it’s that they willfully blind themselves.”

— Bob Avakian

Interesting on Elena Kagan and the So-Called "Left"

So, I just read this article from David Sirota where he writes: 

"We know Kagan was among the Clinton administration advisers urging the president to support a serious abortion restriction and to avoid reducing racist disparities in criminal sentencing. We know that as Harvard Law School dean, Kagan 'hired 29 tenured or tenure-track faculty members [and] did not hire a single black, Latino, or American Indian—not one, not even a token,' reports Duke University’s Guy-Uriel Charles. And we know that in her solicitor general confirmation hearings, Kagan stated her radical belief that the government can hold terrorism suspects without trial.

"Again, if this were a Republican nominee’s record, 'The Left’s' pro-choice and civil rights groups would be frantically mounting opposition—or at least raising concerns. But this is a Democratic nominee, so they’ve fallen in line. Planned Parenthood celebrated Kagan’s 'dedication,' the NAACP trumpeted her 'commitment to diversity' and the liberal Alliance for Justice said it 'applauds' her nomination."

What he is describing is both accurate and despicable.  It brings to mind a very important truth articulated by Bob Avakian:

"If you try to make the Democrats be what they are not and never will be, you will end up being more like what the Democrats actually are."

Abortion On the Line – A Time for Rage, Not for Lobbying!

In May of this year, Dr. George Tiller, one of the most courageous abortion doctors in the country, was assassinated. Two weeks ago, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a version of health care reform that includes an amendment, Stupak-Pitts, that would deprive women of health care that covers abortion if they receive any form of government stipend or tax break. While a similar amendment was narrowly defeated in the Senate, the final health care bill is yet to be determined.

Taken together, these events represent an escalation in the legal and extra-legal assault on women's right to abortion beyond anything under the Bush Regime.

Yet, precisely at this moment when an outpouring of rage and defiance is most needed, the silence and capitulation of the pro-choice “movement” is almost as stunning as it is deadly.

This movement has channeled people into the dead-end of relying practically on the Democratic Party and ceding the moral high ground and political initiative to Christian fascists.

In response to the Stupak amendment, the nation's most recognized pro-choice organizations – Naral, Planned Parenthood, NOW, the Feminist Majority Foundation, and others – formed a coalition and called for a “Day of Action” in DC. But, for reasons they didn't explain, they canceled their outdoor rally at the last minute and focused entirely on lobbying. The Democrats all already know that Stupak will cause women to suffer and die. What they – along with everyone else – need to know is that the pro-choice majority is no longer satisfied to just come begging for our rights.

The name of their coalition, “The Coalition to Pass Health Care Reform and Stop Stupak,” is itself quite revealing. Note that their lead slogan is to “Pass Health Care Reform.” Only secondarily do they mention “Stop[ping] Stupak.” And nowhere do they demand a repeal of the woman-killing Hyde amendment which banned federal funds for abortion and is the precedent that Bart Stupak is claiming. All this is keeping precisely within the logic of the Democratic Party and almost guarantees capitulation. Even Louise M. Slaughter, the co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, voted for Stupak-Pitts in the name of passing health care reform!

Unfortunately, this defensive and losing dynamic is not new.

In 2006, the governor of South Dakota signed a complete ban on abortions. The pro-choice coalition that formed (which included Naral and Planned Parenthood) did not expose this as the viciously anti-woman measure that it was nor did they seize the moral high ground against it. Instead, they ran television ads which argued merely that the ban “went too far” by failing to make any exception for rape, incest and the life of the woman. These ads also called for people to "honor and protect human life, reduce the number of abortions.”

Stop and think about that. If you have actually argue that women who are raped or whose lives are in danger ought to have access to abortion, you are arguing with people whose view of women is nothing more than sex objects or breeders. Even worse, you are arguing on their terms! And, the idea that pro-choice people who donated to stop this ban ended up underwriting ads against abortion and for the idea that fetuses are “human life” to be “honored and protected,” is truly sick!!

Finally, the pro-choice movement not only has distanced itself from abortion, it has distanced itself from the doctors who provide abortions – even when they have been under deadly assault. Harkening back to Dr. Tiller, it is notable that despite the outpouring of nearly a thousand supporters from around the country to his funeral, the leaders of Naral, NOW, and the Feminist Majority didn't even bother to show up.

This type of “leadership” is worse than nothing at all.

The problem is not that there is a lack of pro-choice people who would flood into the streets to protest. The last time they were called on to do so (in 2004) more than half a million descended on DC. Nor is the problem mainly, as some now argue, that a whole generation has grown up without the harrowing memories of botched illegal abortions. While these kinds of visceral memories certainly can lend urgency and passion to pro-choice people, the real problem is that for decades the energies of the pro-choice majority have been consistently squandered, suffocated and channeled into dead-ends by pro-choice “leaders” who long ago slavishly subordinated themselves to the Democratic Party.

The real problem is that, because of this, two generations have grown into a world where it is far more common to hear a passionate defense of the so-called “rights” and “dignity” of frozen embryos than it is to hear an unapologetic defense of the right and dignity of women being able to decide for themselves when and whether to have children.

The real problem is that for decades the lunatic Christian fascists have consistently mobilized while the pro-choice “movement” has remained largely passive and straitjacketed in the Democratic Party's dynamic of capitulation.

The fact is, as much as some Democrats may disagree with banning abortion, they are a ruling class party. Their allegiance to maintaining the stability of U.S. capitalism-imperialism is much greater than any principles they have on behalf of women or any other oppressed group they seek to appeal to for votes. They desperately want to avoid the fall out from actually mobilizing the forces necessary to go up against and defeat the Christian fascist movement more than they want to avoid fascism itself. As for the Christian fascists, they actually make up a very important core of the ruling class and are quite eager to mobilize their social base into a fascist frenzy. This dynamic, if left on the terms of the ruling class, will only get worse.

Barack Obama and the Democrats are wrong when they say we can or should seek “common ground” on abortion.

What “common ground” can there be with a movement whose aim is to enslave women to our reproduction and force us to bear children against our will? What “common ground” can there be with a movement that will stop at nothing – not terror and assassinations or faulty science and woman-killing legislation – to deprive women of the ability to be more than breeders? As bad as a ban on abortion would be, it would not stop there. There is not a single “pro-life” organization that upholds birth control. The very Catholic Bishops who pushed Stupak-Pitts consider birth control “intrinsically evil.” Groups like Human Life International praise the anti-abortion laws in El Salvador, where miscarriages are investigated by the government and women are thrown in jail if they get an abortion.

The right to abortion is central to women's role in society and there is nothing “tragic” about it. Fetuses are not babies and abortion is not murder. Without being able to decide for themselves, free of coercion, shame or danger, when and whether they will have children, women have no more freedom than slaves. When half of humanity is oppressed, all of society suffers.

It is long past time a different dynamic be set. It is time for the pro-choice majority to unchain themselves from the craven political calculations and capitulation of the Democratic Party. It is time to unshackle our energies from the pro-choice “leadership” that has tied itself to that Party. It is time to go back into the streets. It is time for the millions of women who have had abortions to come out and speak openly and defiantly about this, to lift the shame and to challenge the stigma. It is time for doctors who provide abortions to be cherished and protected. Not only must Stupak-Pitts be defeated, abortion and birth control must be expanded and celebrated. Abortion must be available on demand and without apology. Women are human beings capable of participating fully and equally in every sphere of society together with men, we must not be enslaved to our reproduction.