The most restrictive law against abortion in 50 years just passed.
It went into effect in Texas on Sept 1st, 2021, effectively banning abortions across one of the largest states in the US. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court has already refused to block this law, creating legal precedent for other conservative states to follow suit with their own restrictive legislation.
While this seems like a brazen attack against women and trans people, there is something much more sinister involved. Through social reproduction, the working-class literally produces the next generation of workers for the workforce. The current wave of attacks eliminate reproductive freedoms, reinforcing patriarchal gender oppression and the gender binary for the sake of reproducing and preparing more workers for the workforce. When they say “the preservation of family values,” what they really mean is the continuation of capitalists’ profit—capitalists only care about your identity and personal life when it affects their bottom line.
Perhaps even more sinister is that under capitalism businesses don’t even have to invest time or money into their own workers because that burden is placed solely on the working-class and largely performed as unpaid labor. Reproductive autonomy is in peril so that the working-class can privately raise, educate, and prepare workers for free, just to go work for some company and make some asshole boss rich. This may seem like an oversimplification because most of us don’t view our families and comrades this way, but this exploitation is essential to capitalism.
These laws do nothing to curtail abortion! They just create more horrible situations for the working-class, some life-threatening. They will force more undocumented immigrants to make the impossible choice between a risky abortion and a risky trip through border patrol checkpoints to access a safe abortion. Working-class pregnant people will be forced to make tough decisions in situations that will have severe societal ramifications for generations to come.
Abortion restrictions only serve to reinforce ongoing class antagonisms. They ensure that those with wealth and power get to keep it and pass it down to their children, so they can keep dictating the lives of the rest of us.
As if this all wasn’t enough, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health on Dec 1st, 2021, which directly challenges Roe v. Wade. If this happens, 22 states are in danger of having abortion completely banned. The Supreme Court has historically refused to hear cases regarding abortion, signaling that Roe v. Wade would stand, so the fact that they even agreed to hear the case is very significant.
While the Republican Party has been busy gutting access to legal abortion, the Democrats have deprioritized the issue. Every campaign season, they promise to protect abortion rights, yet they implement no protections once elected. However, on Sept 24th, 2021, the Democrats managed to pass the “Women’s Health Protection Act” in the House “to show solidarity” against the wave of recent attacks. This bill is dead-on-arrival in the Senate—it doesn’t have the full support of Senate Democrats, who refuse to abolish the filibuster. So this is a purely symbolic gesture. That’s all that we can ever expect from “the graveyard of social movements.”
Solidarity cannot be legislated from above by elites. Solidarity comes from the people organizing from below, in our streets and workplaces!
We demand free, safe, legal & accessible abortion on demand without apology!
We should follow the lead of Argentina, Poland, and Mexico, where abortion rights have been recently won through militant struggle. Nothing we’ve won has been obtained through the ballot box, but through blood and sweat in the streets.
We cannot allow nine unelected elites in the Supreme Court to undemocratically determine the future of our bodily autonomy. To defend the rights of women and trans people, we must:
- Demand free healthcare on demand—including abortion, birth, and gender transition healthcare
- Defend clinics, confront the right, and shut down anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers”
- Demand paid medical time off and parental leave
Ultimately, we need ownership and control of our healthcare system by workers and patients, not the state, bureaucrats, corporations, and religious organizations.
“The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won before that decision, all over the country, by grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the right. If the American people, who by a great majority favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme Court decision can take it away.” —Howard Zinn
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The Denver Communists organize together on the basis of a mutual commitment to revolutionary socialism, internationalism, and liberation from all oppression. We are dedicated to the study and application of revolutionary socialist theory, history, strategy, and tactics. We participate in struggles against the system in order to advance and learn from them and to win our fellow fighters to revolutionary politics. If you have a burning desire to understand and change the world, we want to work with you!