"Every human being, from the moment of conception and in every subsequent stage, is sacred," Pope John Paul II kept saying in all his speeches during his recent trip to Ireland and the U.S.A.
The crusade for "respect for life and the family" that the pope has conducted since he found himself at the head of the Catholic church can only give aid and comfort to the ruling class in its attacks on oppressed strata, and women especially.
For the wing of the bourgeoisie that has always declared its opposition to the right to contraception and abortion, this is valuable support. In ite parliamentary attacks against any bill offering the slightest liberalization of the ban on abortion, the right wing has in fact never failed to quote abundantly from the pope's statements. And the many articles expressing reactionary points of view on this question that have appeared in the international press in recent months have also not neglected to refer to "papal authority."
As for the wing of the bourgeoisie that is supposed to be "liberal," it has found the pope's position a good pretext for maintaining its wait-and-see stance with regard to the abortion laws. This also gives it an excuse for the retrograde policy it upholds on the economic and social aspects of such questions.
Internationally, it is clear that everywhere that the bourgeoisie has made some concessions on the question of abortion and contraception in response to mobilizations by the women's and workers movements, it is now trying to take these gains back.
One of the reasons for this bourgeois offensive, of course, is the economic crisis and the austerity policy that the governments in office are trying to impose on the proletariat. They are trying to limit social spending and reduce the budgets of "nonprofitable" sectors such as hospitals. And in almost every case, the first appropriation to be cut is that allocated for setting up abortion and contraception centers.
However, the bourgeoisie's determination to attack the elementary right of women to abortion is also part of the general offensive that the ruling class is waging against the democratic rights of the workers movement.
"Down with abortion, down with contraception, down with extramarital sexual relations, and down with homosexuality," is what the pope said in essence. And the organizations fighting to deny women the right to choose could then take up this cry and amplify it, rejoicing to see such a "program" being put forward.
Would they dare to rejoice at the death of a young English woman, who was unable to get an abortion despite her attempts. She died recently after giving birth to a premature infant. She had already lost a child a few days after it was born. She had heart problems, trouble with her lungs, and only one kidney. But the doctor she went to for an abortion put so much pressure on her that she finally agreed to continue her pregnancy.
This story created a furor in the British press. But what should be said about the thousands of women who die every day around the world as the result of backalley abortions, especially in the underdeveloped countries?
At the time of his visit to Mexico last spring, the pope violently attacked "these campaigns for divorce, using contraceptives and abortion, which are destroying the world." But, according to World Health Organization statistics, 14 out of every 100 women who have abortions in countries where it is illegal die as a result. And in some Latin American countries, the percentage is still higher. But the pope didn't say a word about that! This is the kind of "respect for life" preached by the church and by the right wing throughout the world.
The pope's sermons seem, however, to have put some new wind in the sails of the American "right to life" movement. Recently Senator Javits, who is known for taking positions in favor of abortion, found his office in New York filled with red rose8.
Knowing that these roses did not come from any admirer, male or female, but that they were the calling card of the antiabortion movement, he had them taken to a children's hospital. When the right-to-lifers showed up an hour later to shower him with abuse, one of them was infuriated when she learned what happened to the flowers. She made this sinister and memorable statement: "These flowers were for the dead babies, Mr. Senator, not for the living ones!"
No doubt the speeches that John Paul II gave to the crowds that thronged to see him in Ireland were a great comfort to those people in Ireland who favored the reactionary law on contraception just passed there. (Abortion is totally illegal in Ireland.)
According to the new Irish law, only married couples are allowed access to contraception. A medical prescription is necessary even to buy condoms, and doctors have the right to refuse to give a prescription to unmarried persons. This corresponds completely to the papal view of things!
However, the pope and his faithful servants seem to have underestimated one thing-the explosiveness of the abortion issue. The same statements that inspired renewed activity by the antiabortion movements roused an unprecedented wave of protests from feminist movements around the world. And these feminists often found themselves being supported by a section of the workers movement.
Since the end of the 1960s, when the women's movements began to take up the fight on the issues of contraception and abortion in Europe and North America, mobilizations around these questions have continued to broaden and to win more and more influential support in the organizations of the workers movement.
At the start, it was groups of women who took up these issues. They were often isolated and generally ran up against the outspoken hostility of the leaderships in the workers movement. It was these groups that called for mobilizing against the repression directed at women who had had abortions and who took up the fight for the right to contraception and abortion.
The women's movement, moreover, remains and will remain the backbone of every mobilization on such questions. This is because very often it is starting from an awareness of their need to control their own bodies that women's consciousness develops out of their oppression and a desire to unite with other women.
However, it is significant that in a number of countries, under the pressure of the women's movement and their own rank and file, the leaderships of the workers movement have had to change their tune. And if they are not actively engaging in the struggle, a number of them support the essential demands put forward by the campaigns on abortion. They do so in particular when this question is a focus of confrontation in parliament and when their image depends on the position they take toward it.
In France, the "Veil law," which was provisionally passed five years ago, comes up for a new vote in parliament in January 1980. After the first illusions had passed about the changes made by the law, French women had to face the facts. The "Veil law" did not by any means give them the right to contraception and abortion.
After a momentary ebb in the mobilizations that forced the government to make concessions in 1975, collectives arose in most of the country's cities. These were united-front bodies, often formed at the initiative of women's groups or family. planning centers that brought together political organizations, feminist groups, family organizations, and independents. Resuming the battle that MLAC [Mouvement pour la liberté de l'avortement et de la contraception] had waged before 1975, they. demanded total decriminalization of abortion, and free abortion on demand for all women, including minors and immigrants. They also demanded the creation of contraception-abortion-sexuality centers over which women and the organizations fighting for contraception and abortion would have right of control.
In face of these radical demands, the Communist Party decided to come out for "improving" the Veil law, notably by including a provision for having the socialsecurity system reimburse the cost of abortions. The Socialist Party proposed a plan clearly more progressive than that of the CP, and it denounces the Veil law as a "hypocritical and insufficient" document. But it has said, on the other hand, that this law represents "a gain of new rights."
In any case, even if their amendments are not accepted, both the SP and CP will certainly vote for readopting the present law, as the government proposes, "in the name of social consensus."
But this has not prevented many acti vists in both parties from working in local collectives and from supporting an orientation in these groups far more militant than the position of their parties.
Likewise, many union locals and women's committees of the CFDT [French Democratic Confederation of Labor], and even some in the CGT [General Confederation of Labor], are participating in these collectives and in the initiatives they take. This is despite the fact that the CFDT and CGT, which have come to an agreement with the FEN [the teachers union] on a common platform regarding voluntary interruptions of pregnancy, say that they do not envisage associating themselves with non-trade-union actions.
A first demonstration on this question was called by several feminist groups and personalities for October 6 in Paris. This was supposed to be an all-women's march, but many men in fact participated. In all, about 50,000 persons marched, This was an extremely important first step in the nationwide campaign. On the initiative of the National Coordinating Committee of Collectives, a new national demonstration was scheduled for November 24, on the eve of the debate in the National Assembly.
Thus far the right wing of the government has failed to get its point of view accepted. Chirac, the movements for a higher birth rate, and other avowed enemies of freedom of abortion are keeping quiet. The counterdemonstration organized
October 28 march of 40,000 people by the "Yes to Life" group on October 6 was pitiful. But the fight that must still be waged to win the rights that women are demanding should not be minimized. And victory will depend on the attitude taken by the workers movement.
In this regard, the mobilization that is developing today in Great Britain at the initiative of NAC [National Abortion Campaign] and the LARC [Labour Abortion Rights Campaign] is an example of the path to follow for all the movements that exist throughout the world.
The NAC was formed five years ago to demand the enforcement of the law (already at the time 50 percent of abortions could not be performed in public hospitals because of the lack of beds and therefore the cost was not reimbursed). The second objective was to fight back against the first attempt, which was made then by a Labour member of Parliament, to amend the law in a restrictive way.
The mobilization paid off. The bill was not passed. But since then the NAC has had to wage a hard fight against successive attempts by the right to undermine the gains represented by the British abortion law, which, despite all its restrictive clauses, is one of the most liberal in Europe.
In the Labour Party not only have all supporters of the right to abortion joined forces in LARC. They got the 1977 party congress to adopt a resolution calling for defense of the 1967 law. Moreover, the work done by the NAC and LARC activists in the unions prepared the way for the first congress on the question of abortion in the history of the British labor movement. It was held in November 1978.
The 400 delegates present included representatives of the major British unions, although a majority were white-collar workers. They decided to build the mobili-
G.M. Cookson/Socialist Challenge in London protesting the Corrie antization around this issue and organize a central demonstration on abortion, if the parliament made the slightest move to limit the law now in effect.
All this has not prevented many tradeunion leaderships from openly supporting the most reactionary positions on the question of abortion. Nor has it stopped a lot of Labour MPs from taking refuge behind arguments of "conscience" and voting for the new reactionary amendment presented last spring by Corrie, a Tory MP.
But the facts speak for themselves. In response to the new threat to the 1967 law, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called a national demonstration in London for October 28. Whatever the general political reasons that led the powerful union federation leadership to take such a measure, this can only represent a step forward in raising the consciousness of the working masses.
Of course, the defeat of the Labour Party in the elections, as well as the general attack on the working class by the Thatcher government, considered the most reactionary since the 1930s, had a greater weight in the decision of the bureaucratic leaderships than any desire to defend women's rights.
Of course, it is only the tenacity of the LARC and NAC activists that will make it possible to mobilize the rank and file of the unions. Thanks to bureaucratic operating procedure, the unions were often not even informed of the position taken by the TUC!
Of course, what the unions have done so far is not sufficient, because the attacks abortion bill. The demonstration was sponsored by the Trades Union Congress, Britain's central labor federation.
abortion bill. The demonstration was sponsored by the Trades Union Congress, Britain's central labor federation.
will continue, and the mobilization can only continue to go forward if the workers movement undertakes an all-out struggle against the austerity policy of the bourgeoisie.
But these actions by the labor movement represent an advance from the previous period in which the campaign for abortion was becoming more and more isolated.
It is all the more important to draw the lessons from the mobilizations of the last few years in Europe and North America, since in some countries the fight is only beginning.
In Spain, for example, the organizations of the workers movement are adopting the same sort of wait-and-see positions that we have seen in other countries. A campaign has begun in the Basque Country, and there have been debates in the municipal councils controlled by the left. The SP and CP councilors have abstained in the vote over the platform on abortion presented by the Women's Assembly of Euzkadi, a regional coordinating committee. However, fifteen municipal councils have gone on record supporting this platform, for amnesty in all abortion cases, and for legal recognition of the right to abortion.
The CP's position, which is simply to call for pardoning the women now accused of having abortions, seems all the more contemptible now to those who have engaged in a collective struggle that made an immediate impact on the national level.
As in other countries, many CP and SP activists are taking an active part in the struggle of the women's movement, and it is possible to appeal to the ranks of these parties to convince them to join in the fight and force the reformist leaderships to support the right to abortion.
Just as in other countries, women trade unionists are sensitive to the importance of this mobilization, and it is possible to undertake work in the unions to demand that the leaderships stop just making fine speeches and begin to act. (On the initiative of the women's committees in the unions, the question of abortion has already been the subject of many debates in the Workers Commissions.)
So, it is essential to spread the news about the experiences the women's movement has gone through in given countries so that women in other countries where the struggle is only beginning can base themselves on the acquisitions made elsewhere.
It is striking, for example, to note that in Mexico the mobilization has developed over the last three years in a way very similar to the way it has in several European countries. In 1976, for the first time, a group of feminists began a campaign for the legalization of abortion.
The following year, on the same day, four groups participated in the "Days of Action on Abortion." There were six such days in 1978, and they were supported by several unions, the CP and the PRT [Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores, the Mexican organization of the Fourth International].
these "days" took on an
This year, unprecedented breadth. The Feminist Coordinating Committee and the National Front for Liberation and Rights of Women (FNALDIM)-which includes several union organizations, feminist groups, and political organizations-got several recently-elected leftist deputies to present their common platform for debate in parliament.
This example can have an important impact on Colombia, where the debate on abortion was opened up in all the press when an abortion bill was introduced by a Liberal deputy. While this proposal was a timid one, it got its author called an "antichrist" by the Conservatives and all sorts of moralists.
So, the Colombian feminists who are already fighting for the unrestricted right to abortion are going to have a hard struggle. Clearly, it will be a help to them to be able to exchange experiences with the Mexican feminist groups, who are also confronted by a Catholic church that has a strong hold on the masses and by the evasiveness of the reformist leaderships.
For this reason alone-to make possible a dialogue between countries and continents, between women who are fighting for the same demands, the International Campaign on Contraception, Abortion and Sterilization (CICAS) must continue.
After the March 31, 1979, day of action, which was a real success, the international coordinating committee set up in June 1978 discussed continuing the campaign and the objectives to be put forward in the coming period. It was obvious that there was a desire to widen the committee internationally and a need for a Europe-wide coordinating committee that would meet regularly. This was reconfirmed by the movement that arose to defend a Portuguese woman journalist who was threatened with several years in prison for taking part in a TV program on abortion.
On this occasion, feminists throughout the world showed their determination to stop the bourgeois courts from passing a vicious sentence against one of their sisters. This determination was displayed once again in recent weeks in connection with the Bilbao trial and the new trial that took place in Portugal on October 29 against a young woman who had an abortion in 1974. She faced two-to-eight years in prison, and her husband and the friend who gave her the necessary address risked up to six years in prison if convicted. (Already 17,000 Portuguese women have signed a declaration addressed to the premier in which they say that they have had an abortion.) This support movement must continue.
It is important that in Luxembourg the women's movement called for a demonstration on October 18 when Thatcher was speaking in their country and that they managed to get the press to publicize their interpretation of what is happening in Britain on the abortion question and the attacks by the Conservatives against women's rights.
In the same way, it is important for the abortion movement in Britain to offer direct and concrete support to the campaign for freedom of contraception that is beginning in Ireland.
The fact that we want to support the fights being waged in other countries and that through international solidarity we have the ability to exercise a weight in mobilizations that take place thousands of kilometers away is one of the essential features of the international campaign. However, CICAS has other goals.
In the relatively near future, for example, CICAS wants to organize an international conference on contraception, abortion, and forced sterilization. Such a conference would be organized first in Europe and would enable us to move ahead in discussing the fight to be waged and the demands to be put forward in order to meet the real needs of women.
In this connection, three working committees have been set up to produce written materials on what seem to us to be the key themes at this stage of the mobilization, which are the following:
• The question of the antiabortion movements, which are being organized and coordinated on a wider and wider international scale.
• The question of the policy of the international pharmaceutical trusts and the quality of the contraceptive methods they offer us.
• The question of the right to choose of working women, who are often subjected to a killing speedup and discrimination in hiring. There is a notably high percentage of miscarriages in some industries resulting from the production-line tempos and harmful conditions in the factories. Women job applicants are sometimes given pregnancy tests without their knowledge, and some companies ask women to undergo sterilization in view of the harmfulness of the products they will have to handle.
The work of these commissions is to serve as a basis for some of the discussions in the conference, and it will be reported on regularly in the bulletin that the international coordinating committee has decided to put out, beginning in January.
Now that the CICAS has been in existence for a year, a thrice-yearly bulletin is an indispensable tool for strengthening our solidarity work and getting information to all the movements active throughout the world. And it also should serve as a means for overcoming the problem of the exchange of experience being centered too much on Europe.
(The next Coordinating Committee meeting will be held January 19-20, in Brussels.)