More Attacks on Women’s Right to Choose

May 29, 2023

The attacks on women’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion are continuing.

In South Carolina, the state legislature passed, and the governor signed, a bill that would make abortion illegal after six weeks—before most women even know they are pregnant! The state supreme court had previously stopped a law to ban abortion. But one position on the supreme court has now changed to a more conservative judge and there are now no women on the court, so the state’s Republican politicians are bringing back almost the exact same law to again try to take away a woman’s right to choose.

In North Carolina, the state legislature passed a law banning abortion after 12 weeks. When the governor vetoed this law, the legislature voted to override his veto and put this law into effect. This now will affect not only women in North Carolina, but also women in much of the South. Almost all the states in the South have passed laws restricting the right to an abortion. Some women—those who could afford to travel or take time off work—had come to North Carolina to get an abortion. Now, Virginia will be the only state in the South with some semblance of access to abortion.

In Indiana, Dr. Caitlin Bernard was fined and reprimanded by the state. Bernard had performed an abortion for a 10-year-old girl who was a rape victim. That girl, from Ohio, had traveled to Indiana to get an abortion because abortion after 6 weeks is illegal in Ohio. What was Dr. Bernard’s crime? She spoke publicly about this abortion as a way of protesting the laws restricting abortion. For speaking her mind, Bernard was targeted by the state’s attorney general. She was found guilty of violating patient privacy laws—even though she never named the 10-year-old girl!

Ever since the Dobbs decision in June of 2022, where the U.S Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, attacks on abortion rights have been escalating in many states. All these attacks on abortion rights at the local level are being carried out by state legislators, governors, attorney generals, judges. But across the whole country, in state after state, when people have found the way to express themselves, the majority of the population has made it very clear that they support some right of women to choose whether or not to have an abortion. In the November 2022 elections, in every state where some abortion laws or constitutional amendments were on the ballot, people voted to support abortion rights. Every time a poll is taken, the majority of the population clearly supports abortion rights.

But there are many political leaders in this so-called democracy, politicians funded by multi-billionaires, who try to impose a dictatorship over women’s bodies. Most of these politicians are Republicans. But when the Democrats have been in charge, they, too, have put limits on abortion rights—for example, by voting to renew the Hyde Amendment every year, barring federal money for poor women to get abortions.

Women can’t depend on any politicians. Any rights that women have gotten—whether it was the right to vote, the right to an education, or the right to an abortion—the only rights women have, are those that they have organized and fought for. Just like the working class, we can only depend on ourselves, we can only depend on our own forces.