To-day is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, repealing abortion laws in the United States. Like all anniversaries, it’s a good day for remembering, and for honoring.
Here’s libertarian feminist Lucinda Cisler’s brilliant and chillingly prescient article on “Abortion Law Repeal (Sort Of): A Warning to Women.” From Ramparts (August 1970), on the importance of radicalism to the pro-choice movement and the danger of TRAP laws and state control.
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Ramparts-1970aug-00019
“The most important thing feminists have done and have to keep doing is to insist that the basic reason for repealing the laws and making abortions available is JUSTICE: women’s right to abortion. Everyone recognizes the cruder forms of opposition to abortion traditionally used by the forces of sexism and religious reaction. But a feminist philosophy must be able to deal with all the stumbling blocks that keep us from reaching our goal, and must develop a consciousness about the far more subtle dangers we face from many who honestly believe they are our friends. In our disgust with the extreme oppression women experience under the present abortion laws, many of us are understandably tempted to accept insulting token changes that we would angrily shout down if they were offered to us in any other field of the struggle for women’s liberation. We’ve waited so long for anything to happen that when we see our demands having any effect at all we’re sorely tempted to convince ourselves that everything that sounds good in the short run will turn out to be good for women in the long run. And a lot of us are so fed up with the system that we don’t even bother to find out what it’s doing so we can fight it and demand what we want. This is the measure of our present oppression: a chain of aluminum does feel lighter around our necks than one made of iron, but it’s still a chain, and our task is still to burst entirely free. . . .
“. . . But the new reform legislation now being proposed all over the country is not in our interest either: it looks pretty good, and the improvements it seems to promise (at least for middle-class women) are almost irresistible to those who haven’t informed themselves about the complexities of the abortion situation or developed a feminist critique of abortion that goes beyond it’s our right. And the courts are now handing down decisions that look good at a glance but that contain the same restrictions as the legislation.
“All of the restrictions are of the kind that would be extremely difficult to get judges and legislators to throw out later (unlike the obvious grotesqueries in the old reform laws, which are already being challenged successfully in some courts and legislatures). A lot of people are being seriously misled because the legislation and the court decisions that incorporate these insidious limitations are being called abortion law repeal by the media.
“. . . There are many reasons why a woman might seek a late abortion, and she should be able to find one legally if she wants it. She may suddenly discover that she had German measles in early pregnancy and that her fetus is deformed; she may have had a sudden mental breakdown; or some calamity may have changed the circumstances of her life: whatever her reasons, **she belongs to herself and not to the state.**”
Here’s “Roe v. Wade Day (#36),” which I wrote a few years back. I would emphasize that I wrote this post at the beginning of the Obama administration; halfway through it, I can only say that the resulting legal assault on reproductive rights that Obama has presided over (which depending on the case he has either been complicit in, or else could do nothing effectual to prevent) has been far more extensive and far worse than anything I imagined in 2009. I actually have a great deal of hope about the prospects for abortion rights, but not because I have any hope left at all for “pro-choice” politicians.
http://radgeek.com/gt/2009/01/22/roe_v-2/
“But, as much as I might like for the now-ruling Democrats to roll back the past 8 years of new restrictions on abortion rights, I think the most important lesson to remember on this day is not to put your hope in the politicians and their power-plays. As noxious as Bush Jr.’s regime may have been, we can’t afford to forget that it was not George W. Bush, but “pro-choice” Bill Clinton who spent eight years presiding over the most intense and coordinated legal assaults on abortion rights in the post-Roe era — the emergence and proliferation of TRAP laws and procedure bans from 1992 to 2000. Politicians make political decisions, and even the most principled are subject to political forces beyond their personal control, and when we put our hope for social change in their hands, whatever convictions they confess and whatever parties they swear to, they will throw it away as soon as it suits them, again, and again, and again. If not politicians, then who should we put our hopes in? But the answer should be obvious: we must put our hope in *ourselves* . . . .
“The repeal of the abortion laws in the United States wasn’t a gift handed down out of benevolence by a gang of old men in robes. It was struggled for, and won, by women in our own times. It didn’t take ballot boxes; it didn’t take political parties; it didn’t take clever legal briefs. It took radical women who stood up for themselves, who challenged the authority of self-appointed male experts and law-makers, who spoke truth to power, who took things into their own hands and helped their sisters, in defiance of the law, because they knew that they had a right to do it, and to hell with any law and any government that said otherwise. Radical feminists who built a movement for their own freedom over a matter of months and decisively changed the world in less than five years. . It’s not just that we owe the Redstockings, Cindy Cisler, Heather Booth, Jody Parsons, Madeline Schwenk, and so many others our praise. They do deserve our cheers, but they also deserve our study and our emulation. . . .”
Anticopyright.