Feminists For Choice

Sunsara Taylor is a writer for Revolution Newspaper and and Advisory Board member of The World Can’t Wait. Taylor has traveled to the heart of the controversy around abortion and Christian fascism—reporting from the funeral Dr. George Tiller, leading protests in support of abortion outside Obama’s commencement speech at Notre Dame, and disrupting Rick Warren’s sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church. In 2008-2009, she conducted a national speaking tour to promote the book Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, by Bob Avakian. If you search her name on Youtube, you can watch her indict the U.S. for war crimes and torture while holding her own against Bill O’Reilly. These are her words.

In May of this year, Dr. George Tiller, one of the most courageous abortion doctors in the country, was assassinated. In the weeks that followed, violence and threats against women’s clinics and doctors continued at heightened levels.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate 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 the version that is working its way through the House doesn’t include these same restrictions, Senators Orrin Hatch (R-OR) and Ben Nelson (D-NE) are poised to introduce them. If passed, millions of women would lose the abortion coverage they currently have and complicated abortions needed for the health or life of the woman will become cripplingly expensive.

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. Without the right to decide for themselves, without coercion, shame or danger, when and whether they will have children, women are not free. When half of humanity is oppressed, all of society suffers.

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 as stunning as it is deafening.

The most recognized pro-choice organizations in the country, including Naral, Planned Parenthood, NOW, Emily’s List, and the Feminist Majority Foundation, have formed themselves into The Coalition to Pass Health Care Reform and Stop Stupak! They are not saying they will fight the attack on abortion no matter what it takes; their lead slogan is the demand that health care reform be passed. This is precisely the logic of the Democrats. 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!

For a few days it looked like this Coalition to Pass Health Care Reform and Stop Stupak! was going to have at least some form of public, outdoor rally against Stupak in DC on Wednesday. Indeed, I arranged my travel schedule to be there. But, in the end, they couldn’t even bring themselves to do that. Instead, all their activities were entirely indoors and focused on lobbying. Unless the “action” you are looking for is collaboration and capitulation, lobbying doesn’t count. The politicians all already know that Stupak will cause women to suffer and die. What they need to know is that the pro-choice majority is no longer satisfied to just come begging for our rights.

The problem is not that there are no 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, as some now argue, that a whole generation has grown up without the harrowing memories of desperate women bleeding to death from botched illegal abortions and so they aren’t as passionate about defending this right.

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 two decades the lunatic Christian fascists have consistently and unapologetically mobilized out in the streets and on the airwaves while the pro-choice “movement” has remained largely passive and straitjacketed in the Democratic Party’s dynamic of capitulation.

During his presidency, Bill Clinton developed the mantra that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” a stance which accepts the outrageous premise that there is something wrong with abortion. Hillary Clinton took this further when she called abortion “tragic.” Speaking at Notre Dame earlier this year, Barack Obama insisted that abortion is “a heart-wrenching decision for any woman” and called for “common ground” in reducing the number of abortions.

There is nothing “tragic” about abortion. Fetuses are not babies. Abortion is not murder. It is a very positive thing for women to be able to decide for themselves when and whether to have children. The most common emotion women feel about their abortions is relief. And right now, when 87% U.S. counties already lack any abortion provider, when women have to endure a gauntlet of obstacles (parental notification laws, mandatory waiting periods, financial burdens and long distances to travel, among others), we don’t need fewer abortions, we need more!

There can be no “common ground” with a movement who’s aim is to enslave women to our reproduction and force us to bear children against our will. 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.

In 2006, when the governor of South Dakota signed a complete ban on abortions, these weaknesses of the pro-choice movement were starkly revealed. Rather than exposing this ban as the viciously anti-woman measure that it was, and rather than seizing back the moral high ground, the pro-choice coalition (which included Naral and Planned Parenthood) fought on incredibly narrow grounds. Not only did their television ads argue merely that the ban “went too far” by failing to make any exception for rape, incest and the life of the woman, they themselves called for people to “honor and protect human life, reduce the number of abortions.”

The very fact that they had to make an argument that women who are raped or whose lives are in danger ought to have access to abortion reveals that they were arguing with people who despise women. Even worse, they were arguing on their terms!

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 that 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 if women are to be free!

Contact Sunsara at: sunsarasworld@yahoo.com