'Only struggle will protect our rights'
By Kathy Durkin
From a talk delivered at an April 9 Workers World Party
forum in New York City.
Our party has always supported and
participated in the struggle for women's rights, including
reproductive rights. We've been on the streets demonstrating.
We've helped bring class-conscious, anti-racist politics into
the women's movement. Over the years, we've demanded safe,
legal, affordable abortions and an end to forced sterilization.
And all because in order to have a real choice about raising
children, women must have all the economic and social supports
necessary.
Workers World Party members of all sexes, genders,
nationalities and ages are participating in the April 25 march
for women's reproductive rights. We will be there to express
our rage at the Bush administration's war on women--part of the
class war against workers and oppres sed peoples as a whole,
from the racist anti-poor budget cuts to the war drive.
We want to show our support for the women's movement and do
everything we can to keep growing and challenging the
government.
Some groups have the illusion that if they jump on
Democratic presidential candi date John Kerry's bandwagon and
vote, reproductive rights will be protected. But how can they
trust the Demo crats when under the Clinton administration, for
example, public assistance was wiped out for tens of thousands
of women and children who needed it and abortion clinics and
providers faced a siege of terror? And it is Congress that is
passing anti-choice legislation, and some Demo crats, as well
as Republicans, are voting for the restrictions.
It is the struggle that will protect our rights. In the 1973
Roe vs. Wade decision, there was a majority of Republicans on
the Supreme Court that ruled abortion was a legal right. It was
the massive women's struggle and their supporters who wrested
that victory. It was movements of the work ing class and
oppressed that won Medi caid, Medicare, Social Security,
affirmative action, food programs, suffrage, lesbian/
gay/bi/trans rights, and all social and economic programs.
Nothing was ever handed out by a politician or given as a
right--not under the brutal capitalist system.
We as revolutionaries support all struggles to push women's
rights forward--these struggles are a crucial part of the class
struggle. And in turn, it is in the inter ests of all women
activists to participate in all the struggles against racism,
poverty, repression and imperialist war.
Reprinted from the April 29, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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