One of the focal points of the women's movement, internationally, has been the issue of abortion. The National Abortion Campaign (NAC) is by no means unique. Mass movements have grown up in numerous countries against reactionary abortion laws which deny women the most elementary of rights:the right to decide whether or not to have a child.
The turn of the decade saw the mass mobilisation of WONAC in the United States which led, after a bitter battle with the 'right-to - lifers', to a significant victory when the Supreme Court declared abortion legal in all states up to the twelfth week of pregnancy.
In France, a few years ago, the mass actions of MLAC forced the French government (in the teeth of strong medical opposition) to permit the right to legal abortion up until the tenth week of pregnancy. In Italy, under the pressure of the women's movement, the Socialist Party put forward a Bill allowing abortion within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy and, in Canada, the unprecedented persecution of Dr. Morgentaler given a powerful impetus to the campaign for the It is no accident that, throughout the world, the abortion issue should have been taken up central one facing women intent upon discrimination. In many ways, it has taken on an almosi symbolic character. The right of women to control their ownbodies is so fundamental that masses of women have realised that unless they can win it, it will be impossible to make further inroads against sexual inequality.
That's not to say, of course, that any of these struggles has been easy. | WONAC had a tremendous battle with the 'right-to-lifers', who launched a massive publicity campaign, issuing slides, filmstrips and pamphlets in schools prove abortion was 'murder!. The anti-abortionists have not given up as was highlighted in the recent Presidential elections. Nearer home, of course, we have witnessed attacks, stemming from James Whitels Bill, which have resulted in restricting the limited gains women won under the 1967 Abortion Law.
These attacks upon abortion rights have not been limited to a parliamentary opposition. Whole sectors of the ruling 'establishment' - from the Church to leading Tory MPs - have united in a determined effort to roll back any gains won by women on the road to their liberation. The massive campaign run by anti-abortionists in the USA have found their echoes in France or in Britain with the mass SPUC demonstrations that have drawn thousands onto the streets to repeal the present Abortion Law.
attempt by women to win such a right - the right to control their own bodies - should have produced such a violent backlash', particularly in Britain.
by Sabina Roberts After all, just because animals have no control over their fertility is no reason why women should be denied 'technological' advances control their own bodies. Such a step hardly seems unreasonable in an age when human beings are defying gravity, thinking of controlling the weather by space satellite and transplanting human organs. Why, therefore, should forces from Tory back-benchers to the Church, willing to build mass SPUC demonstrations on the streets, be so passionately in opposition?
The answer is contained not merely in the lurid and emotionally fraudulent arguments used to convince people that abortion is 'murder of the innocent'. No doubt this 'argument! does attract people to the SPUC campaign - people worried about the 'callousness' of present - day society and who (mistakenly) identify abortion with a general tendency to 'devaluel life. There is, however, a much more fundamental reason.
'Victims' The back-bone of SPUC detect in the struggle of women to control their own bodies a more far-reaching and (for them) dangerous implication.. They realise that such a struggle implicitly challenges, or leads women to challenge, all those myths that have been used over the centuries to justify their oppression and keep them prisoner within the family unit.
the main Icareer! for a woman is seen - from birth - as preparation for marriage and her role in the family as 'child-bearer! and 'home-maker!. As late as 1963, the Newsom Report pointed out that this "incentive for girls to equip themselves for marriage and home - making is genetic". It is because women are conditioned almost from the cradle to see themselves as ¡victims! of their biology - as breeders of children - that a justification can easily be found for discriminating against them in every aspect of their life.
It is woman's future role as 'mother! and iwife! (for which, she is assured, geared) that is used to deny her equal educational
opportunities with boys. She is denied, on the same grounds, equal opportunities at work. After all, her main role is to have a family, isnit it?
Even if she opts for a career before having a family, she is still prey to unplanned pregnancies, and therefore not to be trusted in a job of responsibility? She is denied and dismissed first in times of recession because she is not considered to be the main 'bread - winner!. The money she earns is thought to merely supplement that of the husband since her primary role is still viewed as being at home, having and The myriad forms of sexual discrimination that a woman suffers in all aspects of life have their roots in her role as child-bearer in the family unit for which she is educated from her earliest days, In order to acclimatise her to her a second-class citizen, a 'mystiquel is built up around the idea of motherhood & she is assured by the priest and the anthropologist that this is a natural role for which she has a 'maternal Implications The demand for "free abortion! cuts through these myths like a hot knife through butter. By demanding that a woman should no longer victim but mistress of her body - by demanding that she and not the church or the state should decide whether or not she should have a child -the whole justification for her second - class status is undermined.
It a woman is assured of having a safe, reliable abortion when she needs one, then her 'unpaid servant! inside the family, economically dependent or the man, begins to lose its just¡fication. She begins to emerge as an individual in her own right, liberated from the shackles of centuries. At the same time, it would be hard to maintain the discrimination levelled against her in all other aspects of social life ( and which stem from the role she is forced into within the family unit).
Partially freed from her dependence upon the man (who is seen as the 'support! for her her children), more and more women would begin to see the injustice of these forms of discrimination. They would begin to sit up & challenge the fact that they are denied equal opportunities and equal pay. They would begin to further liberation from their sole role as 'wife! and Imother! by calling for increased nursery facilities. It is no accident that women in the USA, for example, since the Supreme Court decision, have begun to extend their chalienge to sexism in many different fields from education It is for these wider implications - the general thrust such a right would give to women's fight everywhere - that has prompted the sharp resistence of reactionary forces in Britain, united in the SPUC campaign, against the Abortion Act.
These forces are only too aware that the right to abortion, by beginning to liberate women from their second-class status as 'wife! or 'mother', questions the very nature of the family unit itself. It is by pigeon-holing woman as a victim of her natural functions - as a prisoner of the family - that the present ruling class are able to enjoy considerable benefits.
After all, it is by conditioning woren to see their main role as child-rearers that the ruling class avoids the financial burden of providing socialised child-care facilities. The 'unpaid labour' of the woman in the family has other advantages. It allows the ruling class to instil into children respect for authority and class / sex roles which equip them later to 'adapt' to a society based upon class and sexual discrimination.
It allows them to divide the working population along sex lines since the woman, cut off and isolated in the family unit, economically dependent upon her husband, is less likely to identify with the struggles he undergoes at work. At the same time, the fact that women are trained to see their main role as wife or mother enables the ruling class to draw them into industry as a cheap labour source, employing them in dead-end jobs, denying them equal pay and sacking them with little social unrest when recessions All these benefits the ruling class enjoy stem from the existence of a stable family unit which the woman acts as the 'hub! in her role as unpaid servant. The struggle by women for control over their own fertility will not change this situation overnight. It will, however, strike at a basic pillar on which the family is built and -by stimulating more and more women to seek further rights - will increasingly liberate her from the family unit which is the medium for her oppression.
It is for this reason that the forces of reaction, from the Church to Tory MPs, have united in a common block to roil back even the very limited rights of the 1967 Ac:. In order to bolster the stability of the family, in order to undercut the Ipermisiveness' of the young, they want to put women back 'where they belong!: in the kitchen. They realise only too well that the undermining of the family unit begins to undermine the very fabric of this society on which they depend for their privileges. NAC~ The campaign launched by SPUC, over the past number of years, has had a significant impact. The mass demonstrations it has launched - culminating, only recently, in those 40, 000 strong in Bradford and elsewhere - have deeply influericed government thinking. Last year, it prompied Labour MP James White to propose his notorious Bill (resting on mass SPUC backing) aimed at curtailing the number of abortions by 180,000 a year.
Even though White's Bill soon 'lapsed', the government felt under sufficient pressure to set up a Select Committee to investigate abortion rights (or rather labuses' of these rights). The Select Committee, on its first sitting, made a series of recommendations to the government which, in themselves, made inroads into the rights won under the 1967 Act. These include curbing the numbers of foreign women able to obtain an abortion in Britain and what amounts to decreasing the time limit on abortions. It is now rumoured that SPUC, heartened by the restrictions that have gone through, is trying to promote a Private Member's Bill which will restrict these rights still further.
Whatever may happen in the next period, two facts are clear. The first is that women's rights under the 1967 Act have already been curtailed
under mass anti-abortion pressure. The second is that further restrictions are in the pipeline. Even though both the TUC & Labour Party have gone on record as supporting 'abortion on request', it would seem that the government would not be averse to them. After all, forcing women back into their traditional role in the 'home! fits in with their current policy of creating mass Disillusion There is no doubt that, in the initial stages, setting up NAC to combat anti - abortion moves was a major step forward. It meant that wide forces, previously content with discussing the problem of women's oppression in the 'abstract', had come together to seriously challenge a concrete aspect of it. Such collaboration itself made it easier to move out & involve ever more women in a struggle to defend (and extend) their rights, as happened on June 21st 1975 when over 25, 000 came out onto the streets.
Since that time, however, even though the anti-abortion forces have stepped up their pressure and won certain gains, NAC has not lived up to its early promise. Not only has it failed to involve broader layers of women in struggle but it has even begun to lose the support of many of those who were initially attracted to it. Today it almost certainly has less support than when it was launched despite the fact that the situation is hardly less grave than then.
many women in the campaign have As a result, begun to question NAC's orientation over the past period. Trying to find the cause of the 'downturn', many have been led to question whether the idea of building a mass - action campaign around single issue was, in itself, a mistake. Writing only recently in Red Rag, two supporters of NAC suggest that ".. the emphasis away from the single issue campaign is a healthy one in so much as it presents the need to push the fight into a more extensive analysis of women's oppression". The Red Rag article reflects a wide feeling growing up in NAC branches which - disillusioned at the apparent downturn in the campaign - have begun to get involved in wider issues.
Articles such as that in Red Rag can be useful if they stimulate a serious debate on the way forward for the campaign. A danger is, however, that Irash! and incorrect conclusions can easily be drawn which can lead thousands of women back into the political passivity (or disillusion) from which NAC originally drew them. Single~Issue Many of us were at the House of Commons meeting (May 1975) which publicly 'launched' NAC.. That meeting, over 800 strong, was so big that another room had to be found to 'housel the over -flow. This positive response, which soon allow -ed NAC to sponsor a 25000 strong demonstration, was not accidental. It was due precisely to its nature as a 'single issuel campaign which is now being criticised in articles such as the one in Limiting NAC to a single issue was, indeed, its greatest potential. First, it permitted the collab-
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