Workers' Liberty

Report from the Feminist Fightback campaign.

On 22 October, MPs will vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. As well as several anti-choice, anti-women amendments, there are real opportunities to extend abortion rights — including access to abortion for women in Northern Ireland, an end to the two doctor rule, increasing the pool of abortion practitioners, allowing more local abortion services and banning misleading advertising.

Please sign up to the following briefing, written by Feminist Fightback, a pro-choice socialist feminist group.

Not a headline you will often read. But there is a chance we can extend our abortion rights this autumn.

In October MPs will vote on abortion rights amendments that have been added to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The 1967 Abortion Act does not apply to Northern Ireland; if a woman finds herself pregnant her choice is determined by how much money she can access. If she is well-off, and can easily raise between £700 and £1000, she will have a private abortion in England or Scotland. If she is part of the more than 50 percent of Northern Ireland’s society that is on, or below, the poverty line, then in all likelihood she will be forced to continue the pregnancy. Or she may try to cause an abortion herself. Eleven percent of Northern Ireland’s GPs say they have seen the results of amateur abortions.

Next month we will have the first chance in 18 years to extend abortion rights when the House of Commons debates pro-choice amendments to the Human Embryology Bill.

Every day recently I have removed anti-choice leaflets from the entrance sign to the hospital where I work at and numerous friends have told me about receiving pro-life propaganda through their door, urging them to contact their MP and ask them to vote against all of the pro-choice amendments.

On Tuesday 20 May MPs will debate and vote on anti-choice amendments to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. The Bill includes such things as provision for research on different types of embryos. It is being used to attack abortion rights, to cut the current 24 week time limit to 20 or even 13 weeks! The fight against these attacks needs to be seen as central to women’s liberation and class struggle.

On 12 April — a very wet Saturday morning — forty feminists from around the country gathered at the London School of Economics for a teach-in on the threats to reproductive rights in the UK and internationally. The event was organised by Feminist Fightback, with a balance of in-depth discussion and practical planning for action.

Although this year has seen no defeats for the abortion rights movement, we cannot afford to be complacent. The government has indicated it won’t seek to reduce the time limit at the moment but this is predicated on scientific evidence of foetal viability – basing time limits on this means any medical advances could threaten abortion rights. At the same time, David Cameron has spoken about the need to reduce the time limit, after leaders of all three parties came out for a reduction during the last election.

On January 16, a parliamentary rally organised by Abortion Rights packed out two committee rooms with over 300 people. Speakers included various MPs and Lords from all three parties, the TUC women’s officer, an adviser to Ken Livingstone and the Fawcett Society.

According to an exchange reported on Shiraz Socialist, Respect Renewal is unlikely to mandate its MP George Galloway to vote for abortion rights.

Laura Rogers and Rebecca Galbraith sent a longer version of this letter to the Abortion Rights campaign.

On Saturday 20 October we went to Parliament Square expecting to be part of a counter-demonstration to the anti-abortion, anti-women rally; instead we were the demonstration. Where were you? Abortion Rights, as the biggest, best supported, “official” pro-choice campaign, it’s time to up the fight!

On 29 October the Commons Science and technology committee published a review of the 1967 Abortion Act. They made three main recommendations:

Over the last year assorted anti-choice forces, from the Catholic and Anglican churches to conservatives and doctors who drafted the original laws, have launched a concerted campaign to roll back abortion rights. Their main focus is the time limit, currently set at 24 weeks (although in practice much lower due to waiting lists and lack of universal provision).

By Maria Exall

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the leader of Scotland’s Catholic church, has made an unprecedented threat to Catholic politicians: support the church’s position on abortion or face excommunication. While Catholic intervention on the issue of abortion is par for the course, such a direct intervention is a new departure. What has caused this outbreak of “political Catholicism”?

The march of organised religion into the centre of political life continues, as does the growth of religious sectarianism as a force in British politics. The latest sign is the outrageous speech of Cardinal Keith O’Brien against abortion in Edinburgh on 31 May.

By Helen Shaw

A seventeen year old Irish woman has won a High Court battle in Dublin to be allowed to come to Britain for an abortion. The woman, known only as “Miss D”, was told in the fourth month of her pregnancy that her foetus had failed to develop properly and is suffering anencephaly, which means that a significant part of the skull and brain are missing. Babies born with this condition are expected to live a maximum of three days.

By Sofie Buckland

In 2003, the Republican-controlled Congress voted to outlaw “partial-birth abortion”, an entirely made-up anti-choice term for the dilation and extraction (D&X) abortion procedure.

Women in Britain have had the right to free, legal and safe abortion since 1967. This right is under attack and should be defended by workers and the trade union movement.

When abortion became legal, women were freed from the danger of backstreet abortions, which had been one of the biggest causes of female death until that time. It was also a big step forward for women's liberation. It was about women being able to assert control over their bodies and their lives. The women's liberation movement, that was emerging at the same time as the legislation, fought for women to have genuine choice over how they lived their lives. Along with the contraceptive pill, which became accessible around the same time, abortion rights gave women control over whether and when to give birth. It was part of liberating women from the roles that had imprisoned them for centuries, when women's role in childbirth had restricted them to childrearing and the home.

Here I am at TUC Women's Conference in Scarborough. Today, I moved RMT's emergency resolution on abortion rights. Here's my speech, plus a report on the debate that followed.

(Pic: The RMT delegation pose in front of the Conference banner in defence of abortion rights)

By Kate Ahrens

Abortion “rights” are under attack. Over recent months there have been several attempts to get parliamentary discussion of proposals to reduce the upper time limit when abortions can legally be obtained from 24 weeks down to 21 or 20 weeks, as well as more subtle moves to attack the current abortion rules by calling for a “review” of whether recent medical development have reduced age at which foetuses might become viable.

Dear sisters and brothers,

We're writing to ask for your help in building the protest for abortion rights due to take place on Saturday 3 March. A copyable poster and leaflet can now be downloaded here.

by guest blogger Glen Burrows, Secretary of Bristol Rail branch RMT

They’re at it again! The combined forces of religious bigotry, conservatism and patriarchy are having another pop at women’s abortion rights – meagre as they are.

By Becky Crocker

Worldwide, women are facing attacks on and erosions of their abortion rights. 4 November saw a significant protest in Poland against a recently-proposed amendment to the constitution that threatens to virtually eliminate abortion rights. Polish Vice Prime Minister and president of the hard right League of Polish Families (LPR) party, Roman Giertych has proposed this amendment with the aim of defending the right of an unborn child from the point of conception. A group of women’s rights campaigners and trade unionists called the demonstration with the slogan; “NO TO WOMEN’S HELL. WE DEMAND LEGAL ABORTION!”.

By Charlie Calam

Reproductive rights in Britain are very vulnerable to attack. Almost forty years since the 1967 Abortion Act women still have to cast doubt on their own mental health to be allowed to have an abortion. This is not the right to choose.

The victory of the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in this week's elections in Nicaragua, just days after a referendum banning all abortion in the country, got me thinking about the relationship between the Latin American left (or, at least, its demagogues) and the struggle against women's oppression.