MASSIVE TURN-OUT AGAINST WHITE BILL *Free abortion on demand - smash reaction, take a stand! This was one slogan echoing along last Saturday's 25,000 strong demonstration against the James White Abortion (Amendment) Bill.
The demonstration marked months of campaigning in trade unions, trades councils, Labour Party branches and women's groups. The National Abortion Campaign was launched when a Parliamentary Select Committee met to discuss restricting further the already inadequate 1967 Abortion Act - Inus conaeming thousands of women to the backThe labour move anners on the demonstration as well as the resolutions of support for the campaign from the ATTI, ASTMS, NALGO, Scottish NUM, and Labour Party branches show that the fight for the liberation of women is getting a wider response in the lab. a our movement.
OMISSION
The IMG has consistently fought against the James White Bill and has argued that the fight for free contraception and abortion on demand should be taken up by the whole of the working class. During International Women's Year, the labour movement has heard many rousing speeches from its leaders" in favour of equal pay and anti-discrimination legislation. But too often a struggle IMG makes it clear-abortion on demand, provided by the National Health Service for the material preconditions for this equality is completely ignored.
Without control over when and if to have children, without adequate paternity and maternity leave, and without free state child-care provision, women cannot be freed from the isolated suffocation of child-bearing and domesticity. Neither their financial, cultural nor political indeppendence can be realised. As socialists, we always take a position in favour of free abortion and contraception on demand.
FIGHT NOW
However, a concerted light on this question - - a fight which the whole working class movement makes Its own - is even more crucial now. The capitalist economy is cracking at the seams. In order to restore its viability and bolster the private sector, it has to cut social expenditure drastically.
Already cuts in education spending are affecting teachers, students and parents. Now the ruling class are trying to make the family provide many of the facilities previously provided by the State (child-care, health etc.).
Because the working class has not broken with the notion that the family, particularly the women of the family, should carry out these tasks of "loving and caring', much of the weight of the crisis can be shifted WOMAN'S A T T00 onto the working class, masked and unresisted. This is why the IMG has attacked not only James White but those Labour MPs who argue that the question of abortion is a matter of conscience. to attacks on the working class,however veiled, can be a matter of conscience for those claiming to defend working class interests!
FIRST STEP Nor can we agree with Renee Short's remarks at last Saturday's demonstration, that supporters of White are acting against women alone. These moves must be seen as attacks against the interests of the whole of the working class.
just the first step in the campaign to obtain free abortion and contraception on demand. If this latest show of strength does not put the final boot into the James White Bill, and must step up the fight to make it inwhenever women request them. We should give every encouragement to these moves and fight for industrial st police and court action.
by attacking the National Abortion Campaign, play straight into the hands of the right wing INo serious resistance Last Saturday's demonstration is it is adopted by Parliament, ther we operable and get it thrown out. Many gynaecologists have joined Prof. Peter Huntingford in stating that they will bypass the Act and perform abortions action to protect these doctors againEven if the impact of the NAC campaign and the positions in favour A WOMANS RIGHT TO CHOOSE! As the 25,000 strong demonstration swelled through the streets, 200 anti-abortionists gathered in Trafalgar Square. This motley crowd represented the ruling class. They stand for keeping women in chains. Organisations like the Workers Revolutionary Party, of abortion on demand taken by many unions force Parliament to discard this particular Bill, there is no guarantee that the Select Committee will not try to introduce equally restrictive legislation. By stepping up the campaign we can keep these reac tionaries on the run. Whatever hap pens to the White Bill, the fight against the restrictions of the 1967 letters. Abortion Act must continue.
The 1967 Act leaves the decision up to two doctors, and goes no way to ensure the quickest and satest methods of abortion and contracep tion are freely available under the National Health Service. Inquiries set up by the labour movement should investigate these inadequacies, along with cut-backs in existing provision and sabotage by reactionary consultants. These inquiries could act as a basis for trade union based action to make abortion and contraception on demand a reality - for example, the picketing of a reality. women's hospital due to be axed in a programme of cutbacks M.C.A.P.P.
Unity with sections fighting priv ate practice, like the Medical Com mittee Against Private Practice, would demand. also further the campaign, for the private abortion racket is one of the most lucrative sides of private practice and one which is a major barrier to free abortion and contraception DEFEAT THE MACT ABOR IV.
It is by taking this path of strug gle that we can develop a way forward. We should not enter the cul de sac offered by Renee Short and the other Labour MPs, who urge us to rely on Parliament and channel our efforts into lining the waste-bins of the Commons with petitions and IGNORED When Renee Short reported the British Medical Association's oppos ition to the White Bill, what she fail ed to tell the demonstration was that this followed an occupation of the BMA offices by doctors demanding an end to restrictive abortion legislation. While we welcome the participation of Lab our MPs in the campaign, we must demand that they throw their weight behind a real programme of action to make a women's right to choose a The building of the national NAC conference on 18/19 October will mark the next crucial stage in the campaign. At this conference we can begin to centralise all these initiatives and strengthen the fight for free abortion and contraception on AT BILL
red weekly 26 june 1975
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ST GROUP E ABORTION DEMAND