A woman's
right to
choose?
Reproductive rights campaigners are facing attacks on several different levels this autumn.
Firstly the goverment's Bill on the National Health Service published in November, will have wide reaching effects on women's already limited choice in their health care generally. For instance hospitals which have "opted out' will not be under any obligation to provide gynaccological services. The closure of Family Planning clinics means that more and more soon-to-be 'cash-limited" family doctors are taking on provision of contraception.
When it comes to medical advances that could benefit women, the control exercised by the multi-national drug companies is used to restrict our choice. RU486 has been under trial for about 7 years and is widely used by women in France. There can be no doubt that this treatment represents the biggest advance in abortion technology since the introduction of vacuum aspiration.
In France, the Socialist govemment overrode the decision by Roussel-Uclaf not to produce it in that country. Anti-abortionists have threatened a boycott of all that company's products if it is introduced in this country. The company are worried by this and are also influenced by the fact that the chair of the Boon-based parent company is himself anti-abortion.
Vigilante groups from the USA such as the Guardian Angels seem to be all the rage nowadays and the most recent ministering angels" to come over call themselves Operation Rescue. This is an outfit who call themselves 'urban terrorists" and who make it their business to terrorise women outside the abortion clinics.
Run by five men in the United States, this organisation indulges in what it calls "pavement counselling' - harassment of women seeking abortions in private clinies up and down the country. Officially the anti-abortion organisations in this country don't support them, but in practice individuals have been participating in these activities.
Pro-choice campaigners in Manchester and London have tried to organise other activites to show solidarity for women victimised by these fundamentalists. In the US itself, women have been organising through the National Organisation of Women (NOW) in massive, sucessful demonstrations against the organisation that they label "Operation oppress you".
As if all this wasn't enough to contend
FEATURES
NO Sa say
GILLICK RUVI
Fundamentalists don't give up easily: the bettle to defend abortion rights continues with, there is likely to be attempts to further restrict our abortion rights through parliament, following the Queen's Speech. It is likely that this speech will make mention of the proposed Embryo Research Bill, based on the 1984 Wamock Committee report.
In this Bill, MPs will be given a straight choice between
• Allowing in vitro fertilisation to continue, but banning use of the remaining embryos for research.
• Allowing IVF and embryo experimentation, but under the guidance of a Statutory Licensing Authority and for only up to 14 days.
Any medical advance which can help infertile women should be supported by feminists. The problem with the second proposal going before parliament is that the 14 day limit tends to give embryos some special status compared to other areas of research and could be used to enshrine "foetus' rights" in law. Whilst there may be a need for a Licensing Authority, the Labour Party and the Pro-choice lobby have pointed out that it all depends who would sit on such a body.
It is ironic but not surprising that a bill which should benefit women by enhancing their choice over whether or not to have children should have brought in its wake so may ideas and proposals which run counter to that. Ann Winterton MP, for example, is putting an Early Day Motion to restrict access to artificial insemination for lesbians and single women, and it is thought that such a proposal might be included in the bill.
There have also been rumours in the press that the govemment would consider allowing an amendment to the bill which would restrict women's aborion rights to a 24 week limit. These are only rumours and according to NAC (National Abortion Campaign) they may even our podies our lives our right N
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have been put about by the anti-abortionists to up the ante in the debate. However the anti-abortionists are almost certainly planning amendments to the Embryo Bill along these lines - except that they will attempt to lower the limit still further, to 20 or 18 weeks.
The anti-abortionists are cynically using the debate around the Embryo Bill to raise the issue of 'foetus' rights' and the issue of viability as a way of restricting women's control over their own fertility. The viability of the foetus to survive with medical help outside the mother's uterus should not be used as a way of measuring the limits of women's choice. Her control over her body should be absolute. They must be halted in their tracks by the liveliest campaign that we can muster to oppose, these amendments - whether they are for 24, 20 or 18 week limits.
At its conference on 28/29 October NAC agreed to do this by setting up a special campaign dedicated to drawing attention to these points and defeating the anti abortion amendments in the first instance, whilst also opposing any other anti-woman amendments and proposals. The campaign will be launched on November 25.
The campaign against the anti-abortion amendments will undoubtedly be the major focus at the moment. But the conference also agreed to campaign on all the other many fronts on which our abortion rights are under attack. After almost fifteen years of campaigning for women's abortion rights and seeing off most attempts to restrict them even further, NAC's membership is currently on the increase and its conference was a pointer to the determination of thousands of women up and down the country who are prepared to fight for a woman's right to choose.
Judith Arkwright