[The following article appeared in the March 8 issue of La Breche, semimonthly of the Ligue Marxiste Ré- volutionnaire (Revolutionary Marxist League), the Swiss Trotskyist organi-
The translation is by Interzation.
continental Press.]
Today, in all the capitalist countries, the problems of abortion and sexuality are on the order of the day. Scandals and trials are piling up to the point that the bourgeoisie finds itself obliged to break the stony silence with which it has until now surrounded these "taboo" subjects (except, of course, when it was a question of a young worker, salesgirl, or white-collar worker who had the audacity to flout sacrosanct morals by having an abortion).
Almost everywhere women and physicians have begun to speak out, denouncing the repressive character of these morals and showing the extent to which women's lack of independence is tied to anything that directly or indirectly relates to problems of sexuality. What has been challenged by the declarations from all quarters that have been published in the bourgeois press (a page headed "Abortion - Sexuality" has become an almost daily feature in Le Monde over the past few months) is not merely the scandal of clandestine abortion and the complete lack of any sex education, but much more the place "reserved" for women in society.
From the Bobigny Trial to the MLF
The trial in Bobigny, France- the "soap-opera" story of seventeen-yearold Marie-Claire, who interrupted a pregnancy with the "complicity" of her mother and two other women - not only revealed the sordid aspects of a clandestine abortion carried out in violation of France's 1920 law (one of the most reactionary on this question). Above all, it allowed a series of witnesses to drive home the direct lines between this question of abortion and the problems of socialization of April 16, women, of their professional work, and of their economic, psychological, and sexual dependency.
This is also what came up in the controversy that followed the indictment handed down against Nicole
NICOLE MERCIER: "No grounds" for prosecuting her were found.
Mercier, the Belfort philosophy teacher who had agreed to hold a class dis-
Dr. Carpentier's famous cussion on l pamphlet "Let's Learn to Make Love."
In both these cases, the controversy went way beyond discussing the events that had provoked it. In both these cases, what the controversy allowed for was an immediate mobilization, carried out either along the lines of the MLF [Mouvement pour la Libération de la Femme] or of some "progressive" organization for women's rights (like Choisir) or of a spontaneous movement of students and teachers. Meetings and demonstrations assembling several thousand persons, letters, and petitions — these were the ways of publicizing the controversy.
And finally, in both these cases, the bourgeois courts had to retreat because of this mobilization, refusing to convict Marie-Claire, imposing "only" suspended sentences against her mother and the woman who performed the abortion, and finding themselves forced to declare that there were no grounds for prosecuting Nicole Mercier. The movement is now continuing in France with the publication of the "Manifesto of the 331," in which physicians proclaim that they have performed abortions and demand the abolition of the 1920 law as well as the complete recognition of women's rights on this matter. (The manifesto has since been signed by many other physicians.) See Intercontinental Press, February 26, p. 215.]
The ANEA [Association Nationale pour l'Etude de l'Avortement- National Association for the Study of Abortion] "Charter on Abortion" is more moderate. Signed by 206 personalities, it also comes out against the 1920 law, but it maintains the principle of a commission empowered to decide in each case whether an abortion is opportune, and it thereby refuses to recognize that women are the only ones responsible for their bodies.
Finally, after a series of televised debates in which many participants insisted on the necessity of separating pleasure from procreation and on the consequent necessity of widely distributing contraceptives; and in which masturbation and homosexuality were "freely" spoken of, an MLF meeting held in Paris "for free and legal contraception and abortion" drew more than 2,000 people, thus demonstrating the topicality of these demands today.
Faced with all this, the French bourgeoisie panics, takes a position, splits, drags out of the file some old projects calling for modification of a few words, commas, or paragraphs in the law; or else, like Giscard the demagogue, claims it wants to change the whole thing. But France is not the only place to go through this situation. Belgium also has its scandals and trials.
The Masses Are With the 'Good Doctor'
After "F-day," the first feminist day, organized in Belgium last November, an explosive situation was touched off by the arrest of Dr. [Willy] Peers, professor at the Free University in Brussels, chief of maternity at Namur, and member of the Belgian Communist party. Imprisoned for having terminated the pregnancy of a mentally retarded young girl who had been raped by her father!), Peers was then accused of having performed 320 abortions in his maternity department during an eight-month period (a vio lation of the Belgian law, which is nearly as reactionary as the French one).
Here again, despite the upright thinkers who declared themselves indignant, this case was the point of departure for a mass mobilization. A petition with 200,000 signatures, hundreds of telegrams, and demonstrations demanding freedom for Peers (6,000 persons marched on January 28, and even more on February 4) expressed the opposition of broader and broader layers of the population to repressive laws denying women any independence.
In other countries, the bourgeoisie found itself forced to give some ground, at least concerning the terms of the law.
In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled abortion allowable and legally authorized (but not free!) up to the sixth month of pregnancy, with the stipulation that after the third month, the operation must be performed in a hospital. Any repressive abortion law is illegal in the United States from now on, and this initial victory is owed primarily to the systematic propaganda work carried out for more than two years by WONAAC [Women's National Abortion Action Coalition].
In Austria, abortion has just been made legal up to the third month, and the Danish government, for its part, has proposed a law providing for free abortion during the first twelve weeks of pregnancy.
Even in Italy, as usual the most backward country on these questions, where at the moment abortion for any reason whatsoever is forbidden (not everyone is so lucky as to live in the same country as the pope), people are debating whether abortion should be authorized in certain cases (physical danger to the mother or risk of an abnormal baby; how the meaning of the word "progress" differs from place to place!).