loans to bail them out-in the natBut bribes to private industry will not provide a solution to the problems facing the working class. Already the bulk of ounts of public money are pumped restart the process which led to the plans that will involve us in building more houses, schools, tactories and First and foremost this means This fight should also involve Building must be run as a bandwagon useful public works, with particular the family. tions. The 1967 Abortion Act allows a woman to have an abortion if two doctors agree that carrying on with the pregnancy would be a greater risk to her physical or mental health, or that it could be socially detrimental. The last clause was very important, as it allowed the doctors to take a woman's 'environment' into consideration.
Even these minimum gains-a far step from the right to free abortion on demand-are now threatened by the James White Abortion (Amendment) Bill. The conditions would be changed so that an abortion could only be obtained if continuing the pregnancy meant 'a risk of serious injury to the woman's mental or physical health'. A study of the grounds on which legal abortions have been obtained since 1967 reveals that at least 80,000 women a year will no longer get a legal abortion if this Bill becomes law.
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RESTRICTIONS
The White Bill also includes restrictions on the doctors eligible to perform abortions. different practices, and places the burden of proof on the doctors. Doctors will be put in the invidious position of having to prove that they did not contravene the Act-i.e. they will be assumed guilty unless proved innocent.
The cut-off date for abortion would be reduced from 28 weeks to 20 weeks. As the Bill also contains a clause stipulating that women must have a 20-week residence qualification in Britain before becoming eligible for an abortion, this would almost certainly exclude foreign women from getting an abortion. There are also restrictions on the right to publish information about abortions or to publish the identity of someone giving evidence in a prosecution. And the only referral agencies allowed will be those approved by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Security.
The James White Bill has rallied around it all the forces who want to chain women to the kitchen sink. These are the people who see women as being some inferior species. They offer women a life centred around the family hearth where they can provide children for the workforce and look after the needs' of the "breadwinner'. Capitalism needs the 'stable" family unit. The pivot of that unit is the exploited and discriminatedagainst. mother. This is why the reactionaries have jumped on the White Because the amendments have been introduced by a Labour MP, the reactionaries are claiming that it is a 'non-party issue. of the Labour Government is breath-taking. Labour ministers chatter on about "individual conscience' and this being a "private matter. They are quite callously prepared to let a group of MPs-Tories, Liberals and Labour-take a decision on behalf of millions of women! Such are the sweet charms of parliamentary democracy.
But opposition to the Bill is growing, centred around those who say that women should have the absolute right to control their own fertility. They insist that women must have the right to plan their own lives and that they should be freed from the alienating and de-humanising sexual role imposed on them by the fear of unwanted pregnancies.
Abortion is not a matter of individual consciences. Nor is it some overriding moral issue. The right of women to an abortion is as much an issue of working class politics as the right to better health services, better education, and equal pay. It is an inseparable part of the struggle by which both men and women can gain their emancipation.
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CONCERN OF THE WORKING CLASS Women's problems cannot be solved in 'individual" and 'private' ways. Matters like abortion, free contraception, wife-battering, nursery facilities and equal pay are the concerns of all the working class. If the workers' movement does not take up these issues and make them a central part of a campagin to change society it will leave its flank exposed to reaction.
The crisis of capitalism means that there is a real conflict about where the resources of the State should be used. The fewer abortions on the NHS there are, and the fewer family planning clinics the State has to provide, the more money will be available to bail out the bankrupt, ailing firms of capitalism. This is another reason why the ruling class wants to shift the burden of the crisis of social expenditure back onto Furthermore, unless the workers' movement wholeheartedly fights for the full rights of women it will not get its own freedom. Nor will it involve millions of women in the fight for socialism. This is why the IMG whilst supporting the campaign against White's Bill, has always-and will continue to fight in that campaign for the rights of all women to free contraception and abortion on demand.
The 21 June demonstration against White's Bill called by the National Abortion Campaign must have the support of every trade union militant, male or female. In every area people should be organising the biggest possible contingents from trade unions, Labour Parties, trades councils, students unions, revolutionary groups and womens' organisaA mighty show of force can defeat the White Bill. What is more it can be a big step forward in building an even bigger, stronger united movement to win THE RIGHT FOR FREE CONTRACEPTION AND ARORTION ON DEMAND It requires tnat the two doctors be in The hypocrisy
review red weekly 5 june 1975