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

Attack on Abortion Rights

Apr 18, 2011

The attack on abortion rights has been intensifying. On Wednesday, April 13, the governor of Kansas signed into law two new anti-abortion measures. One bill requires girls age 17 and under to get parents to sign for the abortion–in front of a notary. The second bill bans abortion half way through the second trimester.

So far in 2011, there have been 573 bills introduced in state legislatures around the country restricting abortion rights in one way or another. More than 120 bills have already passed at least one chamber of the legislature.

A recent “compromise” made by President Obama allowed a rider to the Federal Budget bill that bans federal funding for abortions in Washington, D.C.

After the 1973 Supreme Court Ruling of Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion, attempts to restrict this right began. In 1976 the Hyde Amendment banned Medicaid funding for abortion and the attacks have continued ever since, accelerating recently.

Yet opinion polls in the U.S. regularly show that about 58% of the U.S. population says that Roe v. Wade was a good thing.

How insane that women are having to fight all over again just to have reproductive choices and life choices beyond what our grandmothers used to call “being kept barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen.”