The Spark

the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist

“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx

War on Women’s Right to Control Their Own Bodies

Feb 29, 2016

Abortion clinics across the U.S. are closing at a record pace. In five states–Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming–just one remains. Since 1991, 75 percent of abortion clinics have closed. Seventy-three abortion clinics were shut down in 2014 alone.

What’s more, since 2011 there have been more than 200 abortion restrictions enacted. These restrictions include laws targeting clinics, like standards that are difficult to attain in a clinic setting; laws targeting methods of practice, like banning the use of medications for early pregnancies. There are laws that require waiting periods, or force women to have ultrasounds or listen to fetal heartbeats–to name just a few of the restrictions. It is becoming more and more difficult to get an abortion.

It is an on-going war of Christian fundamentalists against women’s right to control their own bodies. Women will only defend themselves by organizing together–it’s how earlier generations of women won the right to vote, it’s how more recent generations won access to jobs and to the right to decide for themselves what would happen to their own bodies. This generation will defend itself only in the same way.