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

Iowa Law Attacks Right to Abortion

May 14, 2018

Iowa legislators just passed the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the U.S., preventing abortion after a fetal heart beat is detected. That usually means at six weeks, or before some women know they are pregnant. Iowa had already passed a 20-week law, banning abortions after five months. In addition, state legislators had refused federal funding, which closed four Planned Parenthood clinics providing 15,000 women with health services.

As an ACLU official in Iowa, announcing the organization’s legal challenge to the law on Friday, after the governor signed the bill, put it, “This is simply an attack on women, and an attack on poor women, rural women, women with the fewest choices and the fewest options.”

Those opposing the right to an abortion have talked for decades of the lives they have “saved.” In reality, denying abortions means no support, help, or compassion to women who are forced into completing unwanted pregnancies. Anti-abortion activists have helped to force women all over the U.S. into having children they don’t feel able to raise. They have helped create an atmosphere of covert and overt violence against women and against clinic personnel where abortions are performed.

As one abortion supporter put it, “We know that abortion bans don’t end abortion. This just ends safe abortion.”