[The following statement was re leased March 6 by the United Secre. tariat of the Fourth International in response to the appeal for international support from the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition in the United States.]
In a growing number of countries around the world, a historically unprecedented political ferment and radicalization is developing among womicalzanon is developing among women. Young women especially - students, working women, housewives
Call International Abortion Action Week
[The following call for international actions has been issued by the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition (WONAAC) in the United States.]
Women around the world are rising up angry against the laws which deny us the right to control our own lives, our own bodies. Yet in every corner of the globe abortion is still restricted by law, if not completely forbidden. In some places where we have begun to win victories, even these small steps forward are under attack.
For years we have been working, in various ways, separated from one another, to win our right to abortion. During 1971 we began to move forward together. During 1971 the demand "Abortion: A Woman's Right to Choose!" was raised with determination, by growing numbers in a
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growing number of languages and with growing power, by women in many parts of the world. On November 20 we began to coordinate our actions for the right to abortion, holding demonstrations in a number of countries on the same day. Acting together added force to our demands, and inspired us all with a glimpse of the strength and potential of international sisterhood.
Over the February 11-13 weekend 1,300 women attended the Second Women's National Abortion Action Conference in the United States to plan the next steps in our fight. We were joined, in person or through messages, by sisters from Canada, England, France, Holland, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, and other parts of the world. The conference called for an Abortion Action Week, May 1-6, during which a variety of educational and protest actions would culminate in local rallies and demonstrations on May 6.
We urge our sisters throughout the world to join us in making Abortion Action Week an international event, through which we can continue to act together to reach more of our sisters, to make our demands known, and to move ahead together. The Women's National Abortion Action Coalition sees international solidarity and united action as essential to our fight. No force on earth can resist forever the power of women of the world joined together in a fight for our fundamental rights. Abortion: A Woman's Right to Choose!
— are beginning to challenge some of the most fundamental aspects of their the most fundamental aspects of their oppression as women. Not only are they beginning to question, but they are beginning to act as well.
Women are beginning to reject the role of domestic slaves to which class society has bound them for centuries, and they are beginning to challenge the myriad forms that the centuriesold oppression of women takes under capitalism today. Women are demanding the right to equal jobs, pay, and education. They are demanding that society as a whole, not the individual family unit, take responsibility for the care of the young, the old, the sick. They are demanding the right to choose rather than have motherhood forced upon them because safe contraception and abortion facilities are outlawed by reactionary legislation and bourgeois mores. Such demands taken as a whole go to the very heart of the oppression of women and challenge the fundamental institutions of class society.
It is in this context that the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition in the United States has launched a campaign under the banner "Abortion —A Woman's Right to Choose," and is attempting to mobilize masses of women in extraparliamentary action to win this basic right.
In response to an appeal for international support to this campaign, the United Secretariat of the Fourth International expresses its solidarity with the week of actions and the May 6 mass demonstrations sponsored by the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition.