This conference, due to take place in Birmingham this Saturday 20 September, has been organised by doctors masquerading as respecters of human life", and is nothing less than a front for the leading medical lights of the anti-abortion organisation SPUC. With the collusion of the Birmingham Postgraduate Medical Federation, funds are now forthcoming from the DHSS to pay for any doctor who wishes to attend this so-called "educational event'.
Encouraging such well-known anti-abortionists as Professor Hugh McClaren (*I despise doctors who do abortion on demand'), and Myra Sim ("There are never any psychiatric grounds for abortion') to organise against women's health rights in this way is a gross abuse of NHS funds. It will not go unchallenged, as NAC activists will be taking part in a mass picket outside the conference hall itself.
The political importance of such mobilisations by the National Abortion Campaign in the fight for free abortion on demand cannot be overemphasised. Firstly, it is doctors such as these who take advantage of their powerful positions in hospitals MARX-ENGELS SELECTED CORRESPONDENCE This covers a selection of the voluminous correspondence between Marx and Engels, and some from them to other people.
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LENIN'S SELECTED WORKS These three volumes cover practically all the important writings of Lenin: 'Or Karl Marx*, What is to be Done'; 'One Step Forward.....:; Two Tactics.....; 'Lessons of the Moscow Uprising'; The Right of Nations to Self-Determinaton: mperialsm... ..: The Military crooramme or ine roleraran nevo union" etc. are a in volume one 'Letters from Afar'; "April Theses': 'On Slogans': Lessons of the Revolution': 'The Impending Catastrophe...': 'State and Revolution'; 'Marxism and InsurrecTOn" can ine bo sneviks retain state Power'; are all in Volume Two.
*The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky'; 'A Great Beginning'; 'The State'; Economics ana Politics in the era of Dictatorship of the Proletariat' "Left-Wing Communism': Theses for the Representatives from National Abortion Campaign groups and hospitals throughout London picketed the headquarters of the Postgraduate Medical Federation last Thursday, demanding that tie PMF come clean to all doctors and the press on the true nature of a forticoming conference on abortion it is supporting.
SPUC doctor Hugh McClaren-'despises doctors who do abortion on demand - based on their monopoly of medical knowledge to impose their moralistic and backward ideas on women who need abortions, denying them help under the NHS and forcing them to suffer the consequences: private profiteers, back street bunglers, or unwanted kids.
No wonder their strongholds -like Leeds, Birmingham, and Glasgow - have the lowest NHS abortion rates in the country. Here too is the reason why the new out-patient abortion clinic opened in Cardiff some years ago has never been used — Red Books News!zna Congress or tne comintern, Unce a Again on the Trade Unions....'; Better In Were Tere But Better'; etc. are among those The volumes cost only £1.25 each.
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RED BOOKS, 97 CALEDONIAN ROAD, LONDON N.1 A woman's right to choose will leave no place for them in the health service, unless they accept their true role as merely technicians placing their skills at the disposal of their patients. Demands for their sacking, as have already been raised at the Hammersmith Hospital, will bring this point home.
like McClaren lend to SPUC and its activities gives this anti-abortion and anti-working class campaign added credibility. In the trade union move ment particularly, where SPUC organises through 'Catholic Action', there is a real danger of increasing the divisions that already exist on the questions of women's oppression.
a part in winning more backward workers to an anti-abortion position. At all times it is important to take. up the fight for women's rights within the labour movement, but it is even more necessary now at a time of increasing attacks on the working class from all sides. can only be resisted by uniting the whole working class against them, a struggle which can be aided by strengthening the labour movement against SPUC's propaganda, with an understanding of why free abortion on demand is so important.
HEALTH CARE the use of NHS funds for an anti-abortion conference, NAC is moving towards questioning all aspects of the financing and running of the health service. In the present situa tion of massive cut-backs in all health facilities, especially those for women, the fight for money and services to meet the real needs of the working class won't just be a struggle over what happens to a few thousand pounds here and there. It will involve ist strategy for health care that can be implemented through the activity and organisation of the local labour movement.
Only by linking up with such campaigns can supporters of free abortion on demand in NAC have a real prospect of success in the face of future parliamentary manoeuvres by the Wilson Government. The invitation to NAC groups to participate in the forthcoming MCAPP conference on the NHS cuts can be a first step in forging such links.
Berry Beaumont Details of the mass rally against the SPUC doctors' conference on 20 September can be obtained from Birmingham NAC - phone 021-429-1154.
union bodies.
Secondly, the weight that doctors Doctors on SPUC platforms play