therefore have a majority of anti abortion MPs.
Not unexpecieov. inere was a hard core who determined, in the debate in the Umons, oppose abortion points made hese MPs speak for themselves. David James worser worEn came outwiin ne statement mat a DOr tOn- eguals taking ot an innocent life, and taking innocent life is murder'.
Jill Knight (Birmingham baston) claimed: "1 myself know a girl sought an ab course all unesc points werc backco un wiin noney meaical evaence that abortion was highly dangerWOMEN' RIGHTS On the other side Mauree! Colquhoun (Northampton North) pointed •Women have the right to decide what is to happen to their bodies, and have the right to control them and neir own ves Both she and So KIcnarason (Barking) reminded the Labour sent that the Labour Party and TUC Conferences of 1975 had affirmed their support for this two positions DUL OCLWCCE LICSC were a number of MPs who tried to disguise their oovIous oDDoSItion claimIng concern about abuses and profitering is there are claimed support he 1967 professed similar BISCIEOUL concern about abuses. These latter let bar doministrauve measure not chanees in the aw - were all that was necessary to remedy the situation.
i Because the DHiS had the Bill arcady taken achon to regulate she on vaLe sector. in tact unese meas ures were none orner Inan restrictive proposals made by the Select Committee and accepted unanimously by all to limit their activity to parliamentary considerations. were emphasis will then be on changing the Bill in order to delay inis stage and trying to prevent ine g Bill trom ever getting back into the House for its final reading.
put which would make extreme. our would sull result u Testicuons to une exisune law Eg- • nere is a real danger tnat inese so-called supporters of abortion will be prepared to compromise by ments, failing to see tha refusal to seriously build a movement on this issue will be ar important ractor in any resuncuion: on aDorion TIents ne task tor the vanonal A Dor of the working class ana cocco 10 a massic Turou Tor ine acmonstralion callco for 14 May.
SLUaCHIS. trade union members and Labou mobile for this or eat s are cles in their Journals, coacles to concon, anu planni. Joint meeines and actions m ever Locality involve number of people in the build up to the march.
only show which to defeat this Bill CAISES compiciciy, ourn wit also prepare the campaien for ine possiblE that these MPs will refuse to base their activity on the needs othe abortion movement and will agree o amendment A nother sell-out on the abortio issue can only be avoided with the consistent struggic and on ine working class movement, committed to tree abortion on WENDY FORREST 'WHAT'S "NEWSWORTHY" amendments about the fact that in many areas of the country women are faced by less unwantee oregnancies because they can't get abortions on the national health?
worthy" an MP like Benyon gets time to present a private members' Bill to alter the abortion law. But what HaD: about the offered by the NAC tribunal a few weeks ago?' This was the speaker Mandy Merck, staff writer on the London magazine Out, in the third of the 'Marxism sponsored by the IMG. She was cnallenging ine view unal sexism mu the media operates mainly at the 'man-made', 'mankind", etc. begur PREJUDICE She maintained firstly that sexBargest ism is a descripuve term, alcrung us to prejudice.
sometning, bur doesn tien us wny. Like racism, it is an ideological ten wuea teras to contine unt oppression of women to the realm or lucas anu not to cal. malcd relauOns It thus leaves us without a wai of explaining whose or what interests are served and how such Ideo logy perpetuates itself. She preferred the term 'patriarchy' or fatherrule.
Her central argument was that the overt content of media, in terms of image, plot and characUsed and misrepresented. one becomes "news- In literature, as it has this week, when substantive evidence view guest various media takes Time Metal TOEUITES It. does describe terisation was not necessarily the Only way what women were oppres challenged Ene DIOL characterisation emphasis of most Turning she argued, what counts is not the fortunes of the guidelines on heroine, but how they are ideologically mediated in the text by the stance, techniques and forms of ting that they narration adopted by the writer She maintained that sexism and the oppression of women through place not solely at the level of the content, but also through the forms adop ted, which have been traditionally structured in patriarchal ways. guage alone Through a brief examination of women in rock music. sue said la for women rock musicians, changne ne sexist yres is not chourn for one thing, in live performances. the Ivrics are not heard media. anyway. Perhaps, she suggested, the musical form of such music is implicitly patriarchal and hierar chical — or 'ranked', as the avant-garde musician Eno puts it.
to journalism, speaker referred to the National Union of Journalists' Zanu sexis which attempt to de-masculinise grammar and language. While admithad played ar important role (though still no generally practiced), she pointed out that women's activities and their under-representation in the "news' (for example the case of abortion quoted above) could no be changed by tampering with lanMen still control the headlines What is considered newsworthy, sensational or novel, still depends on men, predominantly through male, capitalist control of those Women's magazines, on the
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pre Cred to find thore whine outside of Parliament, is