by The Role of Socialists in the Fight for Reproductive Rights
By Reform & Revolution’s Steering Committee
■ The potential exists for a massive movement to defend and extend abortion rights.
■ Socialists can play a critical role in making sure this materializes by increasing the pressure on key forces that have the authority to initiate mass protests: Planned Parenthood, the Squad, Bernie Sanders, labor unions and to some extent NOW, NARAL, and the Women’s March.
■ DSA should decisively turn towards this issue, with a nationwide campaign demanding these organizations and political leaders issue the call for mass demonstrations on May 14, a million-person march on the Supreme Court in June, and for student walkouts and worker strikes. DSA could call on labor and the feminist organizations to prepare a one day feminist strike in schools, colleges and workplaces.
■ DSA can help rally the left-wing of this broader movement into a socialist feminist force that advances its own demands and strategy.
The Supreme Court leak makes it absolutely clear that the ultra-right majority on the Court is planning to overturn Roe v. Wade. This is a massive attack against pregnant people and the right of women to control their own bodies, won through mass feminist movements 50 years ago.
Overturning Roe v. Wade would be a huge overreach with the potential to trigger a monumental backlash. According to a recent poll, 69 percent of the US does not want to see Roe v. Wade overturned (CNN, January 21, 2022). And this brazen attack is coming from an increasingly discredited Supreme Court. Five of the Court’s six conservative justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote.
The legal basis for overturning of Roe v. Wade also represents a clear threat to other vital privacy-rights previously decided by the Supreme Court, such as the right to interracial marriage, contraception, same-sex marriage, and LGBT+ rights generally. At the same time we are seeing stepped-up attacks on trans people and right-wing efforts to clamp down on discussion in schools about racism, sexuality and sexual identity that are likely to end up in front of the Supreme Court over the next years – with these ultra-conservatives in charge.
Now is the time for mass action in the streets to stop these attacks.
All Out on May 14!
On May 3, one day after the leak was published, thousands gathered in cities all over the country. Planned Parenthood has called for protests on May 14. These steps need to be the start of a massive struggle to either force the Supreme Court to back down or pressure the Democrats and so-called pro-choice Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to abolish the filibuster and pass the Women´s Health Protection Act in the Senate. Such a movement should also demand that President Biden and Congress expand the Supreme Court.
None of that will happen just because of Democratic Party majorities in both chambers and a Democrat sitting in the White House. It will take a massive movement in the streets that exerts sharp pressure on the Democrats and their big business backers to force them to take these steps.
Unfortunately, the forces that have the most authority to put out calls for millions to take to the streets – Planned Parenthood and others – are held back by their liberal politics which look towards the Democratic party as part of an incremental electoral and legal strategy. Sending out fundraising appeals and calling on people to vote for Democrats will not stop this assault on reproductive rights – and everything else in the pipeline of these ultra-conservative justices.
DSA and the socialist movement is not strong enough to substitute for these forces. But DSA can play a key role in rallying a core of more radical youth, women, LGBT+ activists, and workers. And with those forces, we can increase the pressure on Planned Parenthood and others to take the action necessary to fight back.
DSA nationally and in all chapters should boldly step in and challenge the status quo. We need to mobilize big for May 14 and move labor and feminist organizations forward to finally overcome their hesitancy and step up. DSA nationally should put the idea forward to those organizations to collectively mobilize a million people to march on Washington in June. At both the national and local level, DSA could reach out to labor unions, student groups, and other allies to prepare a one-day feminist strike and student walkout, with the goal of putting added pressure on the Court, Congress, and big business, while also strengthening our own ability to fight back independently.
For Socialist Feminism
Our starting demand is to defend Roe v. Wade. But we as socialists should also point out that we need to go further. The only way to protect reproductive rights is to widen them and make them accessible for all, regardless of one’s class, income, race, or location.
DSA could boldly argue for socialist feminism in contrast to the liberal feminism of the main organizations. In our view, socialist feminism can be most concretely popularized at this stage by championing the following demands:
◼ Defend Roe v. Wade ▨ Pass the Women´s Health Protection Act in Congress & end the filibuster ▨ Expand the Supreme Court
◼ Medicare for All, including: ▨ Legal, safe, and free abortions ▨ Free birth control & other reproductive services ▨ Free gender-affirming healthcare
◼ Free and universal childcare & paid family leave
◼ Living wages & affordable housing
It’s time to openly challenge the Republican right and the Wall Street Democrats with a clear socialist opposition that aims to build toward a new, mass Democratic Socialist party. Even in the coming months, every step we take where we don’t just trail “progressives” in the Democratic Party but build power toward an alternative will make it that much more likely that they will be forced to respond to the urgent call to action.
This is the time for DSA’s four elected members in Congress to form a socialist caucus and declare their opposition to inaction and pro-corporate liberalism. Feminist struggles that center working-class and oppressed people should target all the failed promises that Biden put forward to get votes and support in the first place: Where is the $15 per hour minimum wage – or at least a vote on it? This is a feminist issue that impacts women much more than men. Why were the child tax benefits ended? Where is the urgent action to address climate change? Where are the policies to dismantle structural racism? Why did the PRO Act not pass, which would have banned the very types of union busting that Amazon and Starbucks are using against workers right now?
Regardless of what promises are made during campaign season, once elections are over, it is the Wall Street donors who again and again call the shots in the Democratic Party.
The struggle to defend pregnant people, to end misogyny, to protect trans rights and workers’ rights, is a struggle that is focused at the moment against the right-wing dominated Supreme Court. However, on a much deeper level, this is the struggle of working-class and oppressed people to fight for a dignified life in a society built on economic, racial, and gender justice.
Our task as socialists is to be at the forefront of this struggle to defend Roe v. Wade – and, within this struggle, to speak out about the need to fight for a rupture with this capitalist society, for a democratic, socialist future.
