Fight the abortion ban!

South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds on March 6 signed a ban on abortions that is a full-fledged assault on women’s right to life. The ban allows no exceptions for victims of rape or incest or to protect a woman’s health. Legislators sponsoring the law are betting that the two new rightist justices on the Supreme Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, will use it to overturn legal abortion.

This deliberate attempt to turn back the clock hits hardest at young, rural, poor women, who are disproportionately African American, Latina, Asian and—in the state of South Dakota especially—Native.

Why is this happening? The ruling class is so desperate to control their empire abroad and so ruthless in their demand for ever-greater profits that they’re ratcheting up the oppression of working and poor people in this country. But they need some sort of grassroots political organization. The religious right is providing some of the muscle needed to keep these politicians in office long enough to carry out the reactionary corporate agenda.

But they’ve forgotten a major history lesson—if they ever knew it. Sooner or later, the oppressed always rise up in rebellion.

That’s what led to abortion being legal ized in 1973. In unprecedented numbers women took to the streets all over the country to demand the right to control their bodies and their lives.

Are things different today? A poll published March 8 by that well-known conservative mouthpiece Fox News showed that, even by their reckoning, 59 percent of respondents would not support such a ban in their state.

The timing of the ban two days before International Women’s Day is especially galling, adding insult to injury. Ever since 1910 IWD has symbolized the deter mination of women all over the world to end centuries’-old oppression. Its shining hour was in 1917 when the strike of women workers in St. Peters burg was the first shot in the Russian Revolution.

Let’s revive the revolutionary spirit of IWD and build a broad, united fightback movement against all forms of oppression. Into the streets!