“Without Apology – The Abortion Struggle Now,” by Jenny Brown, 2019
Not quite ‘now.’
This book was written before the repeal of Roe v Wade, but it anticipates that eventuality. It is a leftist take on fighting for abortion
against the failed methods of Planned Parenthood, NARAL, MS Magazine and the
Democratic Party’s bourgeois feminists, who have coddled partial anti-abortion
types like Cuellar, Carter, Biden and Kaine. It
puts it in the economic and political context of women’s liberation – something
that Brown says “the lean-in feminists of the 1%” don’t do.
Abortion is not just a ‘cultural issue,’ it is a material,
economic and class issue. So-called
leftists who consider it a diversion or ‘identity’ politics are fools. Brown considers abortion, which is a form of
contraception, part of the fight for contraception and sex education. But it also is an aspect of the need for
universal health care, subsidized or free day care, paid parental leave, higher
women’s wages and shorter hours at work – all working-class matters and something
the U.S. has no laws on. Or as a Marxist might say, key to 'social reproduction.'
SLOGANS
To Brown, the key to fight for abortion is not the ‘choice’
attitude but the ‘emancipation of women’ attitude. Brown calls for ‘reproductive
justice’ as an appropriate slogan. She castigates
the weak legality of hanging abortion on ‘privacy’ or the dodge of ‘choice.’ The Republican Party has decided on forced child
bearing. The Democrats allowed abortion
to be whittled away for 49 years, and still consider means-testing by a hundred
restrictions reasonable. The Dems
thought lawyers, experts, consultants and centrism would win against the whittling
away of abortion rights. Brown knows only the revival of a strong women’s
movement will do the trick. And at this
point it will have to be one that understands capitalism.
Brown lists some of the anti-abortion restrictions prior to
the repeal of Roe v Wade – lack of
Medicaid coverage due to Carter’s Hyde Amendment; waiting periods and required ultrasounds;
parental consent; few clinics; anti-abortion tracts read by doctors; fake
pregnancy centers; abortion pills limited by the FDA and price; gag rules; tightening
time limits; attacks on morning-after pills and IUDs; requirements that a
doctor perform the abortion; that a hospital must be on call; harassment and physical
threats against patients, doctors and clinics.
4 doctors have been killed by anti-abortion fascists, more injured and
several clinics bombed or burnt.
BIRTH
RATE
The key, according to Brown, is that a declining birth
rate is not desired by the capitalist class. This was evident after birth rates started to
drop in the 1970s. The capitalist economy needs more workers, soldiers and consumers
to consistently grow GDP. So-called
leftists who ignore the multiple evidence for this have left materialism
behind. The nationalist dodge about abortion
‘genocide’ or ‘limiting the black population’ is also part of this. Black women have been in the forefront of
pro-abortion struggle, as the working class, including its poorest strata, is
most impacted by forced child bearing.
The U.S. has decided on a punitive and CHEAP method to get
more children, forcing childbirth while providing little help to families. Free reproductive and child care labor by
women and families is their goal. As
Marx pointed out long ago, child bearing and nurturing are part of the
essential social reproduction of the working class, and this burden falls
mostly on women although men are acutely aware of this issue too. On the other hand, most social-democratic
capitalist states try to encourage population growth by treating women,
children and families with a carrot instead of a stick. Across the border in
Canada, abortion is free at any stage, then families are supported in various
ways. Canada attempts to replace any population deficit by immigration. However in the U.S. anti-immigrant hysteria
is normal.
Brown recounts how a left-wing mass movement and a women’s underground brought Roe v Wade into being, not politicians or the Supreme Court. She shows how Ireland voted out the Catholic laws against abortion in 2018 by a 2-1 margin due to a mass movement – similar to what just happened in Kansas. She highlights the various tactics of civil disobedience, lawsuits, electoral campaigns, personal contact and practical mutual aid that work. She has detailed descriptions on what an abortion is and how to perform an abortion, like vacuum aspiration and pill distribution. She highlights the fight against shaming, promotes telling personal abortion stories and focuses on the hidden but widespread reality of abortion across the world, with 30% in the U.S. having an abortion, the majority working-class. As part of her history, she points out that abortion was even legal in the U.S. until 1873. There's some 'originalism'!
WOMEN’S
EQUALITY AND EMANCIPATION
Brown is weak on understanding that men also don’t want to
be saddled with unwanted children as husbands, boyfriends or one-night stands. This was key in the Irish vote. Brown also does not mention white nationalist
or evangelical Christian ‘replacement theory’ that wants more ‘white’ babies. Both of these versions of the American Taliban oppose abortion due to their idea that
women are just baby-machines to bolster the lighter skinned among us. The ‘coat-hanger’ on the cover even she
criticizes, as it makes out that coat-hangers are a way to perform an
abortion. It is not. She does not discuss deeply how limiting or
ending abortion also has a damaging effect on women for miscarriages and women’s health. That is now becoming quite evident.
At first Brown soft-peddles the ‘material’ side of this
question, reprising the 1970s ‘sisterhood’ angle and the 1969 Redstockings
radical feminist group. At the end she also
cites the USSR, the former workers’ states, Vietnam and China in their attempt to make women equal to men across the board, including child
issues. She notes that as the Chinese
economy gets more capitalist, the 1-child policy became a 2-child policy and it’s
now up to 3 as their birth rate drops.
The same thing happened in Poland after 1989, which presently outlaws
abortion except for rape and incest due to the influence of the Catholic Church. This demographic pattern happened in some other former workers’
states like Hungary. The workers’ states were not based on endless and sometimes pointless economic
growth at all costs, so their attitude towards abortion – except Romania – was not
so driven by material factors.’
On the other hand, dropping birth rates in somewhat
homogenous countries like Japan, south Korea, Russia, Netherlands and Denmark are worrying
capitalists. This demographic decline is worldwide,
except for countries like Nigeria and Pakistan, due to what she calls
‘urbanization.’
This is an excellent abortion primer, or perhaps all you
need.
Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 15 year archive, using these terms:
“Abortion Referendum in Ireland,” “State Department Feminism,” “Why
Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism,” “Soviet Women – Walking the Tightrope,”
“Really, Rape, Still?” “Socialist Feminism and the New Women’s Movement,”
“Ireland – What’s Up?” “Fortunes of
Feminism” (Fraser); “Weird Conservative Feminism,” “Freedom Socialist,” “The
Queen’s Gambit,” “Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again,” “Marxism and the Oppression of
Women,” “Stitched Up,” “Shopping World,” “Mistaken Identity,” “The Unwomanly
Face of War,” “Reflections on the Olympics 2012,” “Women in Soviet Art,” 'Three
Essays by Alexandra Kollontai."
And I
bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
August 9,
2022
No comments:
Post a Comment