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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 3, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Editorial: Defend late-term abortions

How did the U.S. House of Representatives choose to commemorate Women's History Month? With a bipartisan attack on women's fundamental right to choose abortion.

On March 20, 77 Democrats joined 218 Republicans in voting to ban a specific type of late-term abortion performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Doctors say that the targeted procedure, called intact dilation and extraction, is rarely used, so the proposed ban will have little impact. According to federal statistics, late-term abortions of any kind account for only 1 percent of abortions performed nationwide.

Despite the few cases, however, the House vote is still a direct assault on women's reproductive rights. Decades of struggle by the women's movement and its supporters have won women the right to choose whether to end a pregnancy. Any restriction threatens women's rights. Women have made it clear they want the U.S. government to "get your laws off our bodies!"

President Clinton has said he will veto the bill unless it contains a provision okaying the procedure if the mother's life is endangered. That's about as spineless a defense of reproductive rights as you could get. Anyone serious about defending women's rights would just flat out say that no infringement of the right to choose will be allowed.

But that would mean standing up to the right wing, something the Clinton administration has demonstrated it is totally incapable of. The women's movement has no such inherent limitations. Women can fearlessly beat back any attack, no matter what the source.

The source, of course, is the same ruling class that is on the offensive against poor and working women. The welfare "reform" law that Congress passed and Clinton signed shows what the bosses and politicians really want for women who have children; they want them as a sub-class, available to perform forced-labor even without child care.

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