Free Abortion on Demand –
Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution

Supreme Court Cancels Right to Abortion:
Trigger for Ultra-Rightist Mobilization

On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision which for almost 50 years was the basis for women’s constitutional right to abortion. Conservatives have been chipping away at that right from the beginning, and now with a right-wing supermajority on the high court (six conservatives to three liberals) they went for the kill. Everyone knew it was coming: the die was cast with the appointments to the court of the rightist dissemblers Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and (on the eve of the 2020 elections) Amy Coney Barrett by the all-round reactionary president Donald Trump. The death knell was sounded on May 3, when the draft majority opinion by Samuel Alito overturning Roe was leaked. Yet even so, the impact of the cancellation of a constitutional right that had stood for half a century was huge.

That day there were large demonstrations, 30,000+ in New York City and thousands more around the country. Most protesters were young – until then, they and their mothers could decide to have a child or not, and suddenly in half the country that right was gone. Many protests were called by non-establishment groups: while mainstream feminists called to elect more “pro-choice candidates” (i.e., Democrats), opportunist left groups couched their strategy of pressuring the Democrats in calls to take to the streets. In contrast, the Internationalist Group/Revolutionary Internationalist Youth and fraternally class-struggle workers groups had contingents in NYC, Los Angeles and Portland, with banners and signs declaring “Free Abortion on Demand,” “Democrats: Faux Friends of Women,” “Bolshevik Revolution First Legalized Abortion on Demand” and “Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution.”

President Joe Biden declared that the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is “a tragic error by the Supreme Court.” But although they had months to prepare for this moment, the Democrats had no answer except to say vote for them in November: “This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” declared the president. Yet even if the Democrats somehow manage to hang on in the House of Representatives and get those fabled “two more Democratic senators,” it won’t ensure that the (limited) abortion rights protection of the 1973 court ruling would now become the law of the land. The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House for a time under Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and now Joe Biden, and never passed a law legalizing abortion. And even if they did, the Supremes would likely knock it out.

This is so well-known that even mainstream TV newscasters point it out. The stark reality is that voting for the Democratic Party will not do a damn thing to restore the right to abortion, much less win free abortion on demand, or defend women’s rights generally. This is also true of “women’s marches” and other forms of “militant” lobbying of the Democrats. Under pressure from Democratic Party activists to do something – “anything!” – in response to the Supreme Court decision, Biden on July 8 issued an executive order, No. 14076, “Protecting Access to Reproductive Healthcare Services,” consisting of “identifying potential actions,” “identifying ways to increase outreach and education,” “promoting awareness” of contraception, etc. In other words, a big nothingburger.

As we have written, what induced the arch-reactionary Supreme Court to grant a right to abortion in 1973 was neither arcane legal reasoning nor simply the pressure politics of street protests. It was a concession wrung from the rulers as U.S. society was in turmoil, with ghettos and barrios aflame, workers occupying auto plants, a losing war in Indochina.¹ To win full abortion and reproductive rights, and just to restore the rights canceled by the conservative court, will require convulsive class struggle by millions of working and oppressed people, challenging the very foundations of capitalism – a system built on exploitation and oppression. And the oppression of women can only be overturned by a socialist revolution to replace the domestic servitude and threadbare “safety net” of decaying bourgeois society with collective institutions providing a decent life for all.

Axing Roe Is Only the Beginning

The Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization not only canceled the constitutional right to abortion, it opened the door to states enacting total bans. As various state “trigger laws” went into effect, abortion clinics began shutting down in state after state. Abortion is now banned in at least eight states, soon to be banned in four more, dependent on court decisions in five states, facing legislative and/or judicial challenges in nine states, and severely restricted in four more. It’s not only in the Deep South: of the 34 states between the Northeast and West Coast, only in four (Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico) are abortion rights intact. Meanwhile, the concurring opinion of Justice Clarence Thomas took aim at same-sex marriage and gender rights, which could soon be on the chopping block.

That’s only the beginning: some state laws are also targeting the “morning after”/Plan B birth control pills and FDA-approved drugs that result in medical abortions, trying to prevent women from getting them in the mail. Moreover, Texas’ SB8 law outlawing abortion after six weeks was predicated on a clause that would put enforcement in the hands of vigilantes, who would get a $10,000 reward for successfully winning a court suit to shut down a clinic. Now there is talk of bounty hunters following pregnant people seeking abortions across state lines, like slave catchers in the pre-Civil War South. Moreover, SB8 was then supplanted by an earlier law, previously ruled unconstitutional, outlawing abortion altogether. Now model legislation is being drafted by a right-wing legal group to replicate Texas’ SB8 vigilante law in other states.

Meanwhile, the National Right to Life Committee is preparing racketeering laws to pursue abortion providers, including for publishing how to get an abortion out of state. More extreme “abortion abolitionists,” who claim that life begins at conception, want to prosecute women who have abortions for homicide. A bill to that effect recently went through the Louisiana legislature, and although it failed to make it to a final vote, similar measures have been put forward in a dozen or so states. The push to declare “fetal personhood” could have the same effect. This is already embodied in Arizona’s abortion ban. Even under existing laws, some 1,300 women have been arrested or charged for homicide or child abuse for inducing abortion or having a miscarriage, according to National Advocates for Pregnant Women (New York Times, 1 July).

So things are looking pretty grim for anyone trying to get an abortion in about half the country. Around the U.S., women and liberals living in “blue” (or Democratic) islands in “red” (or Republican-governed) states, like Austin, Texas or Lincoln, Nebraska, are considering moving, while in “purple” states where the numbers of Democratic and Republican voters are close, often with Democratic governors and Republican-dominated legislatures (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina), all hell could break loose in the fall. Meanwhile, people considering terminating an unwanted pregnancy are rightly worried that Google may provide their computer browsing records or geolocation information to police agencies, or potentially to anti-abortion vigilantes who are effectively deputized (Guardian, 22 May).

The New York Times article cited above referred to the Supreme Court’s abortion decision as a “nation-changing” event, and that is not incorrect. What it reflects is a coming apart of U.S. society, increasingly polarized between “red” and “blue” states, and between liberal urban and conservative rural areas, with the suburbs in play, with markedly different laws on a whole host of subjects. These “culture wars” have been going on for decades. They are also seen over gun control – where Marxists are in fundamental disagreement with the liberals, who want to have a disarmed populace, in which only the repressive forces (and the fascists) are armed – as well as over education, where we are deeply opposed to the conservative right, which wants to ban anti-racist teaching, and sharply disagree with the liberals pushing identity politics.²

A key factor in this polarization is the racial oppression that has characterized American capitalism since its colonial origins, and is deeply embedded in the fabric of U.S. society. This “systemic racism” continues to fester a century and a half after the Civil War put an end to chattel slavery and over half a century after the Civil Rights laws, which are now being steadily rolled back – not least by the reactionary Supreme Court that is canceling women’s rights. Although millions marched in the streets against racist police brutality in 2020, police continue to kill civilians at an undiminished pace. Under the Democrat Biden, police departments, far from being “defunded,” are receiving millions, including from pandemic relief funds. And as liberals falsely blame mass shootings on guns, they gloss over the fact that almost all involve deadly racism.

Various commentators have been talking about impending civil war, which is an exaggeration, but reflects widespread public perception.³ What is true is that there is sharpening polarization, mainly along bourgeois political lines. This reflects the deep crisis of U.S. imperialism, with declining living standards (real wages falling sharply in the last year, runaway inflation, looming recession); over one million people dying of COVID in the U.S. alone; Congress stormed by a racist lynch mob out to overturn the results of the 2020 election; a humiliating U.S. defeat in Afghanistan after 20 years of occupation, and more. Anger growing out of this generalized crisis of a rotting social order is diverted into reactionary channels because of the absence of working-class leadership waging a revolutionary class struggle against capitalism.

Rightist Bigots on the Warpath – Democrats No Answer

In response to the Supreme Court ruling, the response of Biden, Congressional Democrats and mainstream abortion rights groups didn’t go beyond appeals for votes in the November midterm elections, and raising money – lots of it. The New York Times (25 June) summed it up: “party committees and state parties conferring on national messaging and mobilization plans”; “focus groups and polling to assess the issue”; “sprawling fund-raising efforts” by Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America, et al.; launching a website and tapping social media “influencers.” Meanwhile, Biden’s health and human services secretary, Xavier Becerra, declared that the administration had “no magic bullet” to restore access to abortion. Rep. James Clyburn said the Court ruling was “anticlimactic.” In short, ho hum.

With frustration growing among Democratic Party activists, administration spokesmen “said that the president’s hands are largely tied in part because of the Hyde Amendment,” which prohibits federal money being spent for abortions – i.e., for poor women. Left unsaid was that Biden was a main supporter of the Hyde Amendment when it was first passed in the 1970s, and Democrats have voted to uphold it in budget after budget ever since. Restive “progressive” Democratic legislators like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren have pushed cockeyed schemes to perform abortion in facilities on federal land, like military bases and national parks. Meanwhile, they all voted for $40 billion in arms to Ukraine to wage imperialist-backed war on Russia.

So eventually, House Democrats decided to vote on two bills, the “Women’s Health Protection Act” (H.R. 8296) and the “Ensuring Women’s Right to Reproductive Freedom Act” (H.R. 8297). Both were passed on July 15 in an almost straight party-line vote. The former prohibits state limits on abortion providers and the latter prohibits restrictions on interstate abortion services (like sending pills through the mail). In both cases the votes were purely symbolic, since they don’t have a chance of getting through the Senate, where the Democrats don’t have the 50 votes needed for a majority on this legislation, much less the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster, in which Republicans using the Senate’s arcane rules to prevent a vote on the bills. For all their bluster, the Dems are not about to abolish the filibuster.

Beyond the fact that these bills are empty grandstanding, there is the question of what rights they would actually protect. The second bill, H.R. 8297, would nullify any prohibition of abortion services “prior to fetal viability,” defined as the point in a pregnancy in which health care providers judge there is a “reasonable likelihood of sustained fetal survival outside the uterus with or without artificial support.” This is generally considered to be at 23 weeks. After that point, the health care professional would have to attest that abortion is necessary “for the preservation of the life or health of the person who is pregnant.” That is the central standard of Roe v. Wade, which the bill cites at its outset. It implicitly accepts a central argument of the anti-abortion crusaders, that a fetus is – from conception or after a certain point – an “unborn child.”

This is a theological, anti-scientific concept, and a dangerous one. Life begins at birth, not before. Period. Roe explicitly endorses “the State’s interest … in protecting prenatal life,” arguing that “as long as at least potential life is involved, the State may assert interests beyond the protection of the pregnant woman alone.”⁴ As communists, as defenders of women’s rights, we insist that prior to birth, a fetus is a part of the pregnant person’s body, not a separate being with rights or the protection of the state – that is, the apparatus which with its courts, cops and jails defends the interests of the ruling class. Prior to birth, the decision about terminating a pregnancy, or not, is and must be the sole decision of the pregnant person: husbands, boyfriends, priests and pastors, parents and the state, hands off!

But even if a Democratic Congress miraculously passed a law embodying the Roe v. Wade standards for limited protection of the right to abortion, would it stand? Under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government can only legislate certain subjects, all others being relegated to the states. Thus, most criminal laws, laws about medical procedures, education and a host of other matters are state laws, unless they can be deemed (a) to affect interstate commerce, or (b) to be covered by Bill of Rights protections, such as the 14th Amendment’s clauses on due process and equal protection. The Civil Rights laws of the mid-1960s, for example, were upheld by an earlier Supreme Court on the grounds that segregated lunch counters, serving hamburgers, had to do with interstate commerce. Rightist advocates of “states’ rights” always rejected such laws.

The justification for a limited right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, and subsequently in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), based on the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause, was emphatically rejected by the majority opinion written by Samuel Alito in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling. Alito also rejected a broad 14th Amendment right to privacy not found in the Constitution, and he dismissed any justification of a right to abortion based on the Amendment’s equal protection clause, even though neither Roe nor Casey used this argument. So any law to enact a right to abortion based on the 14th Amendment is sure to be struck down by the current Court. As for the commerce clause as the basis for such a law, since the 1990s the conservative Supreme Court has been knocking down statutes based on a broad interpretation of that clause.

Anticipating the decision in Dobbs, the Washington Post (4 May) headlined an article, “Can Congress resurrect Roe if it’s overturned? Well, it could try.” It added in a subhead: “The Supreme Court might well strike that down, too.” It also noted: “If the Supreme Court rules that Congress has the power to protect abortion through legislation, Congress also would have the power to prohibit abortion through legislation.” House Republicans are already drafting such a bill, which could be enacted the next time they have a majority, which could come as soon as the November elections. An article in the New Yorker (28 June), “How the Supreme Court Could Approach Federal Laws Upholding – or Banning – Abortion,” underlined that this Court could well use the theory of “fetal personhood” to outlaw abortion nationwide, even in “blue” states.⁵

The present Supreme Court majority, with hardline rightists at the wheel, is ideologically driven, determined to tear down countless judicial precedents and undo decades of federal legislation. Racists see it as a bulwark against an encroaching nonwhite majority. Proposals to pack the Court by adding more members, impeach justices for prevaricating in confirmation hearings, institute term limits or otherwise reform this stronghold of reaction are a pipedream. Congressional Democrats, particularly so-called “progressives,” can try to counter this judicial wrecking ball, but they will fail, not least because of deep-seated contradictions in their own party. “Abort the court?” Who will do it? In order to overthrow the tyranny of this judicial cabal we call to abolish the Supreme Court through workers revolution.

Opportunist Left Auxiliaries of the Democrats

As noted above, many of the initial protests against the Supreme Court canceling Roe v. Wade with its limited constitutional right to abortion were called by left groups and foundation-funded NGOs (non-governmental organizations). Establishment “reproductive rights” organizations such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America – which was so concerned about projecting a “moderate” image that it dropped the word abortion from its name – are focused on winning votes for “pro-choice” (Democratic) candidates from suburban moms, particularly Republicans repulsed by the misogynist Trump. The role of the opportunist left, on the other hand, is to harness the energy of younger abortion-rights demonstrators whom they exhort to “take to the streets” to pressure the Democrats to act. It’s a classic case of what in the ad business is called segmented marketing.

One of the left groups that prominently called protests over the Supreme Court action is the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). The PSL’s June 30 statement called to “demand that Biden take immediate emergency action” to “ensure abortion access in all 50 states.” This call on Biden – who in 1973 said Roe v. Wade went “too far,” who in 1976 was the main proponent in Congress of the anti-abortion Hyde Amendment, who opposed abortion until he launched his first presidential campaign in 2007 – to use executive powers to defend abortion rights can only create illusions in the Democratic Party. But for the PSL, it’s par for the course. Last year, as Biden was vituperating against “Cuba’s authoritarian regime,” the PSL sponsored a New York Times ad (23 July 2021) calling on him to “return to the Obama opening” of relations with Cuba.

The PSL statement concludes, “If Biden refuses to act, he will have shown the true face of the Democratic Party, which has shamelessly used abortion as a political talking point to win elections while actually throwing abortion rights under the bus....” So after calling on people to “hit the streets” to get Biden and the Democrats to act, the PSL admits it won’t happen. This kind of reformist “tactic” only breeds cynicism. Meanwhile, it is supporting a local initiative, the GRACE Act in Austin, Texas, which it claims “partially decriminalizes abortion.” The main call of this act is for police to make abortion investigation “the lowest priority for enforcement” – hardly “decriminalization.” So the PSL, which in 2020 called to “defund” or even “abolish” the police, today calls on the cops to “deprioritize” abortion prosecutions! In both cases it was building illusions in the capitalist state.

Another left group that called abortion rights protests around the country is Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights and its parent group, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), which also goes by the Internet handle of revcom. Rise Up has been denounced as a “Communist ‘cult’” and a “pyramid scheme” to raise money by the Daily Beast (11 July), the liberal internet tabloid website, and in a statement by a coalition of 23 abortion rights groups. Genuine communists resolutely oppose red-baiting, including when it is directed at groups with which we have enormous differences, like the RCP. The smear article accuses Rise Up of “duping well-meaning abortion supporters,” while the statement reeks of anti-communist identity politics. That the RCP certainly has a personality cult around its guru Bob Avakian is no revelation, but it is a parody of communism. It also has a vile homophobic past. As for being a pyramid scheme, the complaint of the groups that have denounced it is that they want the cash.

Rise Up does have a valid point against its liberal/left McCarthyite detractors: it could hardly “hijack the abortion movement” since it was out protesting against the pending overturn of Roe v. Wade when most other abortion rights groups had given up the ghost and were raising funds for “post-Roe America.” What Rise Up doesn’t accuse its accusers of is acting as a pressure group on the Democratic Party. Why not? Because the RCP/Rise Up does the same thing. Their June 28 statement following the Supreme Court decision headlines: “Into the Streets to Demand: The Federal Government Must Restore NATIONWIDE LEGAL ABORTION NOW!” As if. To pretend that if there is enough protest in the streets, the imperialist Democrats in D.C. could be pressured into restoring abortion rights – that is duping abortion rights protesters, big time.

We denounce the RCP in particular for the fact that, in addition to peddling the insipid anti-Marxist thought of “Chairman Bob,” it and its endless front groups (Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, Refuse Fascism, World Can’t Wait, etc.) all seek to organize militant liberalism and funnel protest into the Democratic Party. In a video reproduced in the Daily Beast article (and promoted by the RCP), Rise Up spokeswomen say that in the primaries, “we need to get as many people to the polls as possible to vote for more progressive Democrats,” to kick out the oldsters and bring in younger ones, and then in the midterms to vote to “make sure that these more progressive Democrats get into office.” Can’t be clearer than that – Rise Up is shilling for the Democrats.

A third grouping that initiated protests following the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade is a coalition between Left Voice (LV, affiliated internationally with the Trotskyist Fraction [FT]) and Socialist Alternative (SAlt, part of International Socialist Alternative). At the June 24 New York City march they called, LV and SAlt speakers put on a left face, criticizing the Democrats. But their main thrust was getting people into the streets. With what program? SAlt is utterly clear. On July 1, it reports, “Boston Socialist Alternative led a rally inside the federal building demanding that Biden and the Democrats stand up and fight for abortion rights.” It demanded that Biden “pull no punches” and force Congress to repeal the Hyde Amendment, “tax the billionaires,” provide “Medicare for All,” etc.

Get Biden, who opposed Roe v. Wade, who pushed for the Hyde Amendment, who opposed calls to tax billionaires and Medicare for all, to champion the cause of abortion rights (which he opposed for decades)?! And to do so “alongside Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi”!! This is not just what Marx and Engels called “parliamentary cretinism,” it is backhanded political support for the ruling capitalist party of the world’s hegemonic imperialist superpower. But it’s no surprise from SAlt, many of whose members and its Seattle city councilor Kshama Sawant, have joined the Democratic (Party) Socialists of America (DSA). Plus it won’t work. On June 23, the Biden White House let it be known that it was nominating an anti-abortion Republican as a federal judge in Kentucky (later withdrawn for lack of Republican support).

For its part, Left Voice has assumed a verbally more leftist posture, but as the left flank of a “mass movement” including bourgeois feminists. The Left Voice (25 June) account of the New York march called by the leftist coalition said they were united in calling for an “independent mass movement in the streets” that “has no faith in the empty promises offered by the Democratic Party or any capitalist party to protect abortion rights.” Yet the call for the march by 30 left, labor and abortion rights groups made no mention of the Democrats or their nefarious role. The same call said it was organizing under the banner “for a federal law for free, safe, legal abortion on demand and without apology.” But who would pass such a law? Like others, this coalition was organized as an attempt to pressure the Democrats, a form of lobbying in the streets.

At that march, LV issued a call for the formation of Bread and Roses, billed as a “socialist feminist” organization, part of an international network linked to the FT. A subsequent article appealing to join Bread and Roses (Left Voice, 9 July) proclaimed “We Need Socialist Feminism.” It called for “an independent movement that does not give one iota of political support to the Democratic Party.” But having “no faith in the empty promises” of the Democrats, or even giving no formal political support to it, is not organizing for women’s liberation against the Democratic Party of racist cop terror, imperialist war and burying women’s rights. LV calls to “organize a mass movement like the one in Argentina,” which, as we have pointed out, was a movement led by the bourgeois Peronists, which won a more limited right to abortion than the Mississippi law that was just approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.⁶

What is common here is that opportunist leftists seek to latch on to an existing, or what they see as a potential, “mass movement,” taking up a position slightly to the left of the mainstream, posing a critic of the more “moderate” leadership and simultaneously being “best builders” of that movement. It could be pro-abortion, anti-gun, whatever, the formula is the same. The result is that the opportunists’ program is ultimately determined by the bourgeois liberals or “progressives.” Their calculation is that when mainstream leaders “sell out,” the masses will be radicalized and flock to the “left” wing of the movement. But more usually the masses become demoralized, while the opportunists act as a perennial left tail of a section of the bourgeoisie. This formula may or may not bring short-term success in numbers, but it’s no way to advance the struggle to make a revolution.

For Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution

Proponents of the revolutionary politics of the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky have a counterposed approach. Our watchword is to “speak the truth to the masses, no matter how bitter” (from the Transitional Program of the Fourth International). The truth is that the liberation of women from age-old oppression cannot be achieved under capitalism, while even simple democratic goals like free abortion on demand, will not be secured under bourgeois rule.⁷ As was just demonstrated by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the cancellation of a half-century-old partial right to abortion, even the most limited advances can be – and will be – reversed as the decaying capitalist system rips up past gains, destroying social programs and driving down the living standards of the mass of working people and the poor.

Revolutionary Marxists fight intransigently for the rights, and full liberation, of women and all the oppressed. This struggle means forthrightly telling the truth that for all the talk of “socialist feminism,” feminism is a bourgeois ideology, posing a sectoral struggle along gender lines that keeps the oppressed within the framework of capitalist politics. For years, the main spokeswoman for “socialist feminism” in the U.S. has been Barbara Ehrenreich, co-chair of the DSA, deeply embedded in the Democratic Party. We are Marxists, not feminists – we fight for women’s liberation through socialist revolution. We combat anti-woman, anti-gay and transphobic bigotry with united class struggle by working people of every gender. Rather than pressuring the Democrats, we call to break with all capitalist parties and to build a revolutionary workers party. On June 24, the Internationalist Group, Revolutionary Internationalist Youth and our fraternal allies marched under that banner.

We have stressed that the anti-abortion crusade is deeply racist. The fight over abortion rights and gay and trans rights is already a flashpoint for emboldened ultra-rightists and fascists, who now feel that the capitalist state has their back. On June 11, more than 30 members of the fascist Patriot Front were arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho as they arrived to bust up a Pride event. The celebration in a park was also beset by a Panhandle Patriots biker club carrying semi-automatic rifles and a Christian fundamentalist “prayer walk.” On July 2, the same white-supremacist Patriot Front marched in uniform through downtown Boston with its flag (a stars-and-stripes with an ax symbol borrowed from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascist party). On July 9, the fascist Proud Boys massed near an abortion clinic in Santa Monica, California.

For Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution

The left and workers movement should mobilize to squelch and disperse such provocations by racist, Nazi and other ultra-rightists who would go after abortion clinics, particularly in vulnerable areas, as well as seeking to terrorize gay and transgender activists and anti-racist protesters. In Portland, Oregon, Painters Local 10 took the lead in combatting racist attacks which escalated after the November 2016 election of Donald Trump. Its resolution, introduced by supporters of Class Struggle Workers – Portland, called for labor to join in “mobilizing against the clear and present danger that the KKK and other racist organizations’ provocations pose to us all.”⁸ Similar resolutions were subsequently passed by seven Portland-area unions, laying the basis for a 300-strong Portland Labor Against Fascism mobilization in June 2017.

The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade did not end the battle over abortion, it escalated it. There will be a push to write the right to abortion into state constitutions, energized by the stunning August 2 victory of abortion supporters in conservative Kansas, who voted down an amendment that would have eliminated that constitutional right. Supporters of women’s rights must insist that the right to abortion be absolute, with no gestational limits. In any case, these are preliminary battles. As we have emphasized, the fight over reproduction rights is only part of the overall issue of the oppression of women in class society. This can only be overcome with the establishment of socialized institutions to replace the domestic slavery of the bourgeois family, on the road to a genuinely communist, classless society.

That will take a revolution, and to get there the key task before us is to forge a workers party on the Bolshevik program of Lenin and Trotsky, a “tribune of the people” defending all the oppressed, to lead that struggle for liberation. ■