ABORTION: AN INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE by J. HEINEN
endum in May 1974 to shake up the strongest taboos of traditional morality one after another. In fact, after the failure of the Christian Democratic inspired referendum to repeal the law liberalizing divorce somewhat, thousands of men and especially women began to speak out and organize to do something about all the other aspects of daily life that maintain the oppression of women: the absence of education about contraception, the banning of abortion, etc. Last spring, the Radical party, the Socialist party, and the organizations of the far left launched a petition campaign aimed at abolishing the Italian abortion law (which dates from the fascist period and prescribes a penalty of five years in prison for any abortion) and at protesting the arrest of Adele Faccio, director of a Florence information center on sterilization and abortion. This campaign assembled 70, 000 signatures in less than three months. But even more important has been the mobilization that has been going on for more than a year now in the facfories, schools, and neighborhoods, with the emergence of women's collectives or mixed groups demanding both free abortion on demand and the state subsidies needed to implement this. Anxious about this movement, the Italian bourgeoisie felt it had to jettison some ballast by passing a bill that had been held in reserve since 1971. This law makes Italian women and men equal before the law, if not before reality. Also, responding to the proposal of the Unione delle Donne Italiane (Union of Italian Women), an organization controlled by the Italian Communist party, the bourgeoisie agreed this summer to pass a law permitting the creation of family planning offices on a nafional scale. The movement for free abortion on demand reacted immediately to the ambiguity of this law. In effect, the law allows the authorities to allocate given sums to private clinics in the event that the reform of the hospital system proceeds too slowly for such centers to be incorporated into the public establishments. Coordinating bodies among various groups were organized on a city level to prevent financial speculation on the health of women and to bar private clinics from accumulating public funds. These coordinating bodies put forward a common platform demanding that the new law be used to create hospital centers for women themselves, centers in which women would have control of the sort of information given out and the quality of the care provided, This was intended to prevent the pharmaceutical frusts from taking advantage of the situation. Concurrently, women would be able to organize the struggle for the right to free abortion on demand under the best possible conditions. An initial national meeting of all these groups was held in Bologna October 11-12. Some 500 women came to discuss the situation and exchange experiences. Of course, this initial discussion was unable to respond to all the problems that were posed: How to intervene in the consultation centers and the schools? How to reconcile the autonomy of the women's movement and the need to continue ongoing work with the mixed abortion movement? How to create sensitivity to these questions within the workers movement? But the first meeting did provide for setting out the axes of the mobilization in the next phase: An international demonstration was called for December 6 in Rome; there was to be a prior day of national mobilizations, organized by regions, The international demonstration is seen as a first step in forging links with other independent women's groups and with movements for abortion outside Italy; but it is also seen as a means of building the mobilization in Italy itself by having the movement acquire greater political weight in a confrontation with the bourgeois state. The rapidity with which the customary ideas on sexuality, the family, and the status of women in society are being challenged in this country in which the grip of the church remains so strong indicates the depth of the political crisis racking Italy. And the effects of uneven and combined development are enabling a relatively young movement to quickly assimilate the gains and experiences of other European countries and to attack the foundations of patriarchal society with that much greater force. Effects of the economic crisis: the example of Britain It is impossible here to analyze all the effects the economic crisis has had on women. On the question of abortion, however, we must stress the importance of the policy the bourgeoisie in most European countries is applying on the question of social investment in various sectors, primarily in the realm of health care. The example of Britain is the most explicit here, given the extent of the heavy "cutbacks" the Labour government made in public expenditures last January. This march to the rear represents a direct attack on the standard of living of the British workers, both for the employees in public services and for the users of those services. The nurses, who are among the poorest-paid workers of the entire working class, had to wage a struggle of several months to win pay increases of 38 percent; in the north of England, some 30,000 people were odded to the waiting lists for hospital beds this past summer. Thus, it is easy to understand that the struggle against the reduction of expenditures in the public sector concerns all British workers, Further, it is easy to understand the link between this struggle and the struggle around free abortion on demand. The number of abortions performed in state hospitals as a percentage of the total number of abortions has recently fallen from 67 percent to 51 percent, because it is generally necessary to wait one month before seeing a doctor, and it is almost impossible to get into the hospital in time. The private physician makes his money during this time, and the government has agreed to aid the private physicians in order to further reduce the share of aid that goes to the public sector. Since 1967, British law has authorized abortions up through the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy; the so-
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ABORTION STRUGGLE cial security system pays for abortions that are performed in state hospitals. If a very large number of women have nonetheless decided to have abortions clandestinely under the worst possible conditions, it is above all because of the hospital surcharges and the very high cost of an abortion in a private clinic (a price that most workers cannot afford). Nevertheless, the reactionary position on abortion adopted by the government must not be seen simply as a desire to save some money. The cost of an abortion - especially by the Karman method - is not so high as to justify special attacks from the standpoint of the government. On the other hand, when Wilson says that he "does not agree with people who claim that a woman should be able to demand abortion as a right, he reveals his real attitude. For him, what is involved is an ideological battle that affects the role of the family, a battle that is directly tied to the uncomfortable position in which the Labour government now finds itself. This government can hardly even claim to be reformist; through its budgetary policy it is reducing the already very low number of child-care centers and establishments for old people, thus forcing women to take over certain tasks that have hitherto been partially carried out by the state. In doing this, women are compelled to renounce a bit of the liberty they have been able to win on the material level. In other words, this is not the time to grant women new rights! What lies behind the specious arguments of the Labour MP James White, who last spring proposed an amendment to the 1967 law in order to prevent abuses in the private sector, " and behind the recommendations that have just been made by the ad hoc Select Committee set up to examine the White proposal, is obviously the desire to make women as vulnerable as possible and to make them bear the social consequences of the economic crisis. James White proposed to restrict the "social" clauses, to refuse to authorize abortions after the twenfieth week of pregnancy, and to prohibit any "publicity" about this subject, which amounts to a ban on any writings about abortion. As for the Select Committee, it proposed that any woman who wants an abortion be compelled to sign up in a specialized office; and the health department would have the right to set limits on the number of foreign women who could get abortions; these women could not be accepted in clinics without authorization. Although they do not fundamentally alter the 1967 law, the proposals of the Select Committee nonetheless move in the direction of those who glorify maternity, those who are struggling fiercely ogainst the independent women's movement and against the National Abortion Campaign (NAC - a nafional movement on abortion formed last spring). The right of women to freely decide whether or not they want children thus remains to be won in Britain as elsewhere. The NAC has understood this. Last June NAC waged the broadest campaign of any European country and succeeded in organizing a demonstration of 25, 000 people against the White amendments. The action was a partial success, for the amendments were not put to a vote in 14
Parliament. In addition, NAC organized a national conference of 1,000 delegates October 19 and 20. They set themselves the task of building the broadest possible mobilization throughout the country during the next few months, and especially at the end of November, when the Parliament is supposed to reelect the Select Committee. The first objective set by the delegates of the seventeen local and national trade-unions and sixty-nine local NAC groups represented was to prevent the committee from being reelected and to popularize the demand for free abortion on request adopted this autumn by the congresses of the TUC (the national trade-union federation) and the Labour party. One of the main axes of the NAC campaign during the summer was intervention in the health sector. Pickets were organized in front of hospitals to protest the shortages of beds and the reactionary attitude of many doctors, who refuse to perform abortions in public establishments. This campaign got a very big response. Very often, it was the hospital workers themselves, both men and women, who organized the pickets on abortion, thus showing that for them the demand for free abortion. on request is linked to all the demands around their working conditions and the needs of the working class as a whole. Reaction raises its head The importance of this battle is especially great since wherever the independent women's movement or the mixed movement on abortion has become strong enough to force the bourgeoisie to partially yield to their demands, reactionary associations have emerged. Their names vary, but their proclaimed aims are identical, whether they call themselves "Laissez les vivre" (Let them live), Friends of the Fetus, "Oui a la vie" / Yes to life), or Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC). Nearly always, these associations are linked both to the most reactionary currents of the Catholic church and to the xenophobic and even fascistic currents of the far right. As far as they are concerned, the desire of women to be recognized as equal to men is a direct attack on all their racist schemas, on their hierarchical vision of society, and on their will to maintain a set order. In spite of the exaggerated declarations and often ridiculous antics of these groups, neither their importance nor their audience, even within the workers movement, should be underestimated. The objective division of the workers movement, its lack of response to the question of the emancipation of women, the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie, the ideas implanted in the heads of workers from tender infancy, the fear of materialism and of anything that threatens to chailenge the traditional relations among people - these are the factors that lend these currents some credibility. But their actual weight varies according to the greater or lesser and more or less official support they receive from the church and according to the depth of male chauvinist traditions and the weight of the racist current in the given country.
In Britain, the SPUC is very powerful. It is obvious that the 1970 SPUC demonstration of 70,000 and the more recent demonstration of 30, 000 last April were not composed solely of priests or members of Enoch Poweil's organization. Of course, this movement is supported by layers of the bourgeois elite, like reactionary doctors. In September, these doctors organized a supposedly "scientific" medical conference around the theme of "respect for human life"; the NAC responded by organizing a picket line in front of the Birmingham hospital where the conference was held. But it remains true that significant layers of the working class, and even of women, are influenced by this association. To the point that they listen with a straight face to statements like that of an MP and gynecology professor who asserted: "The fetus breathes just like a baby in his crib. ... The only difference is that any attempt to cry is stifled by the water in which the infant is submerged." That such obscurantism can have a grip on the working class shows how important are the propaganda activities of NAC, the information and education that must be carried out on all levels, from the schools to the tradeunions to the factories. In the United States, a recent inquiry showed that half the women who wanted abortions in 1974 were unable to get them in hospitals because of the shortage of beds. These were primarily young women workers and rural poor who live in areas where the hospital infrastructure is very undeveloped. Thus, if is not surprising that reaction is taking advantage of this state of affairs to take some action. The Catholic church is waging a hysterical campaign for the "rights of the fetus, "calling abortion murder and encouraging, for example, the condemnation of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, a Black physician who heads up a gynecology clinic in a Boston hospital and is known for being one of the few procticing physicians in this hospital willing to perform abortions. Dr. Edelin was convicted of murder on the grounds that he had performed an abortion and had not attempted to save the fetus, which was alleged by the authorities to be "viable." Those in the Catholic church who defend the life of the fetus to the point of demanding that thousands of dollars be spent on trying to keep three-to-four-months-old fetuses alive artificially are the same people who stoned the buses carrying Black children to predominantly white schools. They are the same people who encourage the forced sterilization of Black and Chicana women in order to limit the nonwhite population. In France, a problem is posed because the Movement pour la Liberté de l'Avortement et de la Contraception (MLAC - Movement for Free Abortion and Contraception) has lost much of its strength after the passage in January 1975 of a law authorizing women to get abortions up through the tenth week of pregnancy. Since then, organizations like "Laissez les vivre" have gained strength. Today they are trying to eradicate the gains made by the movement.
Because of the reluctance of the trade-union federations to do anything serious about the demand for free abortion on demand (although, thanks to MLAC's actions, this demand figures in the joint platform of the CGT and the CFDT, the main two national trade-union federations), reactionaries of all stripes have found it easy to wage their campaign. They propose to "isolate the abortionists of the nation by recommending that the public patronize only physicians who respect human life." Further, they want to "provoke civic awareness by initiating court cases requesting that the portion of tax money and social contributions alloted to 'the financing of legal abortions' be refunded. " This movement, which claims to have more than 20,000 members today, intends to publish a list of approximately 1,500 physicians who are opposed to abortion. In addition, they proudly claim that since the formation of the group in 1971, they have prevented 5-6 percent of women who had wanted abortions from getting them, through the work of the "SOS-Future Mothers" association to which "Laissez les vivre" is linked. In face of this situation, the task of revolutionaries is not to close their eyes to or minimize such a current, but to do everything to make the workers movement as a whole take up the defense of the elementary right, restricted as it is, that has been recently won, Wherever possible, debates must be conducted and actions must be carried out showing the link between exploitation and the specific oppression of women, between the reacfionary aims of a section of the bourgeoisie and the overall interests of the employers. The employers would be only too happy to have at their command a malleable and enslavable work force unable to defend itself because of its lack of skill, its low level of organization in trade unions, and, nearly always, its submission to the idea that "women's work" is only secondary and does not deserve equal pay. What is true in France is even more true in Switzerland. In this country women have not even won the right of abortion, and the trade unions did nothing except weakly support an initiative demanding freedom of abortion during the first three months of pregnancy. But the adherents of the "Oui a la vie" group have already organized a conference centering around the theme that "abortion is murder and decriminalization encourages the crime. In Geneva the MLF (Movement pour la Libération des Femmes - Women's Liberation Movement) occupied the office of the PDC (Parti Démocratique Chrétien - Christian Democratic party), designating it as "an enemy of women because the PDC blocked a debate on abortion during the last session of the Chamber of Deputies." The comrades took advantage of the occasion to use the PDC press to print a bulletin on abortion. But the impact of this action on the working class remains very weak, since the trade unions themselves will not agree to participate in this struggle. The conference of the women's division of the Union Syndicale Suisse (the trade-union federation that includes all. the secular unions), which is to be held at the end of November, may provide an opportunity to take the first steps in this direction.
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If the groups that are determined to fight against the right of women to control their own bodies have been able to partially develop in all these various countries (and many other examples could be cited), the reason is that the wing of the bourgeoisie that holds more enlightened positions on the question has felt no need to intervene against the reactionary current (or has had no means by which to do so). This proves one thing: When the bourgeoisie gave in and granted more or less progressive legislation, depending on the country, it was not because the bourgeoisie "sincerely" wanted the liberation of women; it was because the bourgeoisie wanted to hold back a movement of radicalization of women that was becoming dangerous. This movement was threatening to contaminate other layers of the population and, through its challenging of the oppression of women and the nuclear family, was threatening to expose the very foundations of patriarchal society. Policy of the "progressive bourgeoisie» The governments that put up such resistance before agree ing to distribute the pill and are still extremely relucfant about any propaganda in favor of the pill nevertheless do not hesitate when it comes to granting financial aid to India so that the authorities in that country can force women to use contraception in order to limit the increase in the birth rate. Allan Barnes of the Rockefeller Foundation complains that women are constantly demanding improved means of contraception and goes on to add: "If the ideal contraceptive were discovered today, it would certainly not be introduced in the United States, but in a country like India, where there is a much larger and more eager market for this sort of product. " By "ideal" contraceptive, this gentleman means a profitable contraceptive and not an effective one, as women have the insolence to demand. What is important to the bourgeoisie os far as abortion is concerned is not so much the economic aspect of the problam (except in the case of what is called "overpopblation) as the political aspect: The question of the women challenging the status assigned to them in society. In countries like Spain, Portugal, or Ireland, where the influence of the Catholic church remains very strong, the bourgeoisie is still totally opposed to any liberalizafion. But one has only to look at the example of Italy to see that the bourgeoisie will not be able to maintain this attitude indefinitely. In all the other countries, most of the bourgeois parties have understood that they have an interest in making concessions if such concessions can avoid a deepening of the social crisis, In this sense, it is essential for them to prevent women from becoming really independent, What will become of the family if women become conscious of their rights? And if the family is shaken, what will become of moral order? And what will become of cheap labor when women become strong enough to demand wages equal to men? The position of the reformists contributes a lot to preventing working women from becoming conscious of all this, for the reformists allow all the parliamentary illu16
VORKINO WOMEN CHE Woero UNitE Чац 101E0 Arpent sions to persist, making abortion a simple problem of laws. They do not move in the direction of challenging the status of either women or the family. The position of all the European Communist parties is quite explicit on this subject. This position runs from the Italian CP — which during the campaign around divorce asserted, "No, divorce does not destroy the family" and which in its proposed law on abortion concedes that women should be punished if they underge abortions without making a prior request - to the French Communist party, which has always refused to support MLAC and which declared very recently: "The family, where the future producers are born and grow up, is an indispensable factor for the existence of humanity and for humanity's constant march toward progress. Fundamentally limited by an ideology that seeks to reconcile the traditional place of women in the home with women's right to work, the Stalinists always talk of "compensation" for women but never challenge women's role in the family. As for abortion, for them it is a last resort that must not be abused. In Switzerland the doctor who is the spokesman for the Parti du Travail (the Swiss version of the CP) on this question asserts with a straight face that he manages to convince one-third of all women who come to consult him to keep their children. If some representatives of the Communist parties are now beginning to make some timid criticisms of the traditional family structure, it is because of the pressure of demands put forward by the independent women's
LOVEMENT POUR LL LIBERTE
•E L AVORTEMENT BERLA CONTRACEPTION movements, to which women Communist militants are sensitive; the CP leaders are afraid of being cut off from a section of their rank and file. This is also true of the Social Democracy, although with some differences. Position of the SPD While the small Italian Socialist party has taken a more progressive position than the Italian CP on the question of abortion in order to gain a little more credibility, the German SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands - Social Democratic party of Germany) has shown its real face: A government party applying a bourgeois policy derived from the right-wing positions of most of the SPD parliamentary deputies and from the positions of the SPD's bourgeois allies. During its latest congress (1973), the SPD formally came out for freedom of abortion. In fact, 80 percent of women in Germany have indicated that they support total abolition of Paragraph 218 of the legal code (introduced under Bismark), which makes abortion a crime. For the SPD this is not a small argument from an electoral standpoint, especially since if concerns a reform that is not very costly. In spite of that, in June 1974, when the vote on the liberalization of the abortion law came up in the Bundestag (the parliament), some SPD deputies voted against. And the party leadership did not react when, six months later, the Karlstuhe supreme court declared the new law unconstitutional. (It is true, however, that many rank-and-file militants and trade unionists of the SPD took to the streets to protest, along with thousands of other people.) "The law is the law, and the law is mode in the name of the people, even if the people themselves have not passed this particular law. " It is probably this concept that has induced the SPD to make a new proposal for the new debate on abortion that is to come up in the Bundestag. There is no question of simply demanding the abolition of Paragraph 218, as is demanded by German women's groups and the "Abortion Action" organization formed this autumn. No, the solution proposed by the Social Democrats basically changes nothing. Abortion remains a crime; it will not be paid for by health insurance, and if the consulting physician refuses to grant permission for an abortion, the woman concerned will be unable to have an abortion clandestinely, because she will have been registered as a pregnant woman. If she has an abortion anyway, she will be subject. to an automatic sentence. Both the Stalinists and the Social Democrats are playing the game of the bourgeoisie: pass some reforms, try to coopt any developing movement, make the minimum concessions, challenge nothing fundamental.
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ABORTION STRUGGLE
Nevertheless, it is clear that both the Stalinists and Social Democrats can be compelled to make a left tum on this question: The position of the reformists is scarcely credible in view of the crisis of authority and the crisis of the family in particular, which is becoming more and more important among the youth, and in view of the impact of the women's liberation movement on all women, even if this impact still takes the form of rejection among many women. The reformists can remain as backward as they are only so long as the movement of radicalization around these questions remains marginal to the workers movement (which is still generally the case, although a change has begun in Britain). Importance of the coming mobilizations It thus becomes essential not only that revolutionaries play an active role in the campaigns to win or defend the right of free abortion on demand, but also that they axis their intervention toward the workers movement. The examples of the radicalization of working women mentioned above show that it is beginning to be possible to effect a linkup between working women and the independent women's movement, which has up to now been largely composed of generally unorganized women intellectuals, students, and women of bourgeois origins who were radicalized after May 1968. This linkup is proving to be possible even in the United States, where the class struggle is at a very low level, and even in Italy, where the dominant phallocratism is an even greater obstacle than elsewhere to the development of consciousness among women of the working-class. The fantastic success of the strike of Icelandic women on October 24, a strike that was followed by 95 percent of women wage earners and was massively supported by housewives, is one more sign of the capacity of working women to organize to refuse to continue being the most oppressed and exploited. Totally paralyzing the postal system, the banks, and most offices, these women offered proof of their strength. The many women's groups in foctories that have recently been formed in France also show that the "women's liberation movement" now has a much more complex composition than it did a year or two ago. These women's groups, which have often appeared during or after struggles waged by all the workers around immediate demands, exist today because it is precisely during struggles that women become conscious of their specific problems, particularly by noting, for example, that they are the ones who have to leave the general assemblies to go home and take care of the children on the grounds that there is no child-care system. And the inequality between the male and female striker exists in the simple fact that it is always the men who take the floor, In organizing among themselves to try to break down this state of affairs, women are in fact joining the ranks of the inde18 pendent movement, even if they do not consider themselves "women's liberationists." The women active in these groups clearly see the necessity of forcing the trade unions to take positions on all the problems that affect them. The unions' refusal or agreement to actively commit themselves to the battle for abortion will in large part depend on these women. But this will also depend on the capacity of the revolutionary organizations, and revolutionary Marxists in particular, to build a strong movement around abortion, a movement that represents all the exploited and oppressed social layers, in which the workers organizations will be represented, but a movement that is also capable of incorporating all those men and women who are sensitive to this question and are prepared to act to force the bourgeoisie to retreat. This is the direction in which our comrades of the International Marxist Group are working in Britain; through their work, they have stimulated the creation of dozens of NAC groups and have helped to coordinate these groups as well. Likewise, the activity of our Italian comrades of the Gruppi Comunisti Rivoluzionari (Revolutionary Communist Groups) within the women's collectives and the mixed groups on abortion has confributed heavily to achieving the beginning of a centralization of the movement. In Germany, where the movement has arisen more recently, everything must be done to make the movement so large that it forces the Bundestag and the Schmidt government to yield to its demands. The demonstration that took place in Frankfurt on October 26, although it drew an insufficient number of people (5, 000-6, 000), was a first step in this direction. The important thing now is to consolidate the campaign by winning over women's groups and trade-union groups to the perspective of this struggle in order to make the deputies give in when the parliamentary debate comes up and in order to bolster the confidence of those people who tended to get discouraged after the Karisruhe court decision. They must be shown that the struggle can and must be continued on all fields relating to the oppression of Revolutionary Marxists in all countries must work in this same direction, systematically advancing their own demands to drive the debate forward, but remaining attentive to the fact that the new aspect of the radicalization now taking place around the theme of the oppression of women, and more particularly around the theme of abortion, allows these questions to be discussed and taken up by the workers movement. In this sense, the international demonstration in Rome on December 6 organized by the Italian coordinating group will represent an international gathering point for all the European movements struggling for freedom of abortion; it should also provide for working out the possibilities for common action in the future.