On 1 September, Texas’ new abortion law was enshrined in the state’s law making it illegal to have an abortion more than six weeks after conception. The six-week limit has been imposed because this is the date at which a ‘foetal heartbeat’ can supposedly be heard. In fact, what can sometimes be heard at the six-week mark is not a heartbeat, but a group of cells firing electrical signals. The Bill also enshrines into law that anyone who receives an abortion, provides one, or is otherwise complicit in the process, can be brought to court and hit with a $10,000 lawsuit.
The nature of the new legislation is quite unique compared to other legal attacks on reproductive rights in the past. Whilst similar abortion bans have been attempted by other states, only this one has successfully made it through the courts. Texas conservatives learned from previous failed attempts and adapted their strategy. Instead of pushing through legislation to be enforced by state officials, they put the power into the hands of individuals.
The Texas legislation gives private citizens the right to sue one another should they suspect anyone of obtaining or helping someone to obtain an abortion after six weeks, and for the $10,000 bounty to be won as a result of a successful lawsuit. On 30 August campaigners filed an emergency request with the US Supreme Court to block the state’s law. The Supreme Court, stacked with conservative judges, refused by five votes to four.
The landmark Roe v Wade victory in 1973 was won not through party politics, but through a militant women’s movement that pressured the Supreme Court into making a concession. This concession set a precedent that has protected women’s reproductive rights for almost fifty years. Throughout that time, attempt after attempt has been made to overturn it. For almost fifty years it has been the only precedent in the US protecting women’s reproductive rights.
Rather than stronger legislation being introduced to maintain and extend these rights, women’s reproductive rights have been eroded by introducing tighter and tighter restrictions on abortion and healthcare in all states across the US. Such restrictions include, this year alone, 561 abortion restriction legislations enacted across 47 states. These restrictions snowball on each other as they progressively increase a patient’s logistical, financial, and legal barriers to abortion. In just Texas there have been 25 abortion restrictions enacted in the last decade.
These attacks are not made out of concern for human life. It is proven that abortion bans do not decrease the number of abortions, but instead push women towards dangerous and often fatal abortions. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that up to 13.2% of maternal deaths around the world are a result of unsafe abortions. WHO asserts that ‘almost every abortion death and disability could be prevented through sexuality education, use of effective contraception, provision of safe, legal induced abortion, and timely care for complications.’
Abortion restrictions are an attack on women but also, more broadly, an attack on the working class as a whole. Abortion bans will impact the hardest on women living in poverty and women of colour, who are more likely to be living in poverty. It is these human lives that are pushed further and deliberately into destitution. In the US abortion is already restricted due to the privatisation of healthcare meaning an abortion can cost thousands of dollars. Women who do not have the funds to pay for their abortion, women who cannot take time off work or do not have a car to travel long distances out of state, will be forced to pursue dangerous and life-threatening means to access backstreet abortions.
Black women in the US experience excessively high levels of pregnancy related deaths due to institutional racism, and this will only increase as more women are forced to endure pregnancy against their will. Immigrants who have restricted movement due to federal immigration checkpoints cannot go out of state to obtain an abortion, even if they could afford it. All of these factors lead to an increasingly dire situation in the US for women.
It is particularly during periods of capitalist crisis that there are increased attacks on women – the attacks on reproductive rights being only one example. The ruling class enacts divide and rule tactics to split the working class along lines of identity and culture to restrict unified class opposition to the ruling class.
The Texas abortion ban opens the gates for states across the US to follow suit. Communists and progressive must fight back against this. The argument for abortion is not moral, ideological, or philosophical; it is material. Free abortion on demand is basic healthcare; it is a human right and a necessity.
Annie O’Conner
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 284, October/November 2021
