Oppose the Bill -fight for women's choice The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, introduced into parliament in November last year, is an attack on women's reproductive rights. While it's clear that the ruling class doesn't agree on some of the issues in the Bill, including the use of an amendment to restrict time limits for abortions, nonetheless, the Bill as a whole represents a right wing attack on a woman's right to choice.
The ruling class are divided over a number of issues in the Bill. These divisions are part of the contradictions faced by the ruling class over the whole question of women and work, the family and sexuality. The changing demography of Britain means that it is necessary to draw more and more women into the workforce, albeit in low-paid, part-time jobs and with flexible work patterns. Providing workplace nurseries is only part of the social adjustment necessary to facilitate this. For while the family remains the place where the reproduction and servicing of the labour force takes place, the demand for more working women means that control over this process, including control over contraception and abortion are also highlighted.
The Bill itself is not centrally about abortion; indeed some members of the Govemment, notably Kenneth Clarke, are unhappy that it is to be amended in. Nevertheless stopping embryo research altogether or restricting it to 14 days, does have implications for abortion rights. It has always been the argument of the right-wing that the embryo/foetus has rights from the moment of conception. To restrict research to 14 days capitulates to that view.
But the right-wing is divided further on other questions in the Bill. For example on the question of Donor Insemination (DI). The Bill sets up a Statutary Licensing Authority (SLA) to license and oversee a code of practice at SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 21, February 1990
DEBATE On THE BILL
57188 REVERSE THF GILLICK RUV clinics for donor insemination; all very vague and no doubt deliberately so. But Tory right winger Anne Winterton wants precision. Her amendment will ban DI for lesbians and single women.
Despite that fact that the number of lesbians seeking Di is very small (for the good reason that DIY is easy) the far right are not content with the vagueness of the Bill. They also suspect that uniting opposition to the Bill will be made more difficult if one of the groups targetted for attack is lesbian mothers. However the right-wing's obsession with "family values" means thay have also attacked single mothers, making the group much larger. While there is not a very strong tradition of defence of women's different needs and rights by all women, it doesn't mean it can't be achieved. amendments - or vote against! The first and most general issue posed is what attitude we should adopt to scientific research and experimentation on the human embryo. Here we have to confront the arguments of the far right, who wish to protect the human embryo as they believe it to be a human being, and are consequently totally opposed to any experimentation.
Socialists must support the position of the National Abortion Campaign which argues that there should be no distinction made between the embryo and other forms of human tissue. The 14-day limit on research, as one
While there are some positive elements of
the Bill, for example the section on surrogacy. (Clause 32) which states that such arrange-
ments are unenforceable; and while we would
obviously support 14 days as opposed to no
embryo research at all, overall the Bill should
be opposed as an attack on women's reproductive rights.
It narrows choice, gives the embryo rights
which could lead to further attacks on aborion.
The SLA will undoubtedly attempt to stop any
DI to other than heterosexual couples, leading to the closure of clinics, restricting choice further. If the Bill passes the 'no embryo research" position, then the important work on genetically inherited diseases will be undermined.
Jane Kelly option in the Bill, is better than no research at all; but it is an arbitrary limit, and cannot be justified scientifically.
In general we favour experimentation on the human embryo, because it will help in identifying congenital diseases, the causes of miscarriage and infertility, and how gene and chormosone abnormalities develop, and lead to the discovery of new forms of contracep tion. But we also demand that research must tackle the causes of infertility and sterility which has increased enormously in recent years because of living conditions, and industrial pollution.
In defending scientific research, the use of
Page 9
Donor Insemination and the new reproductive technologies, we not only have to confront the far right but also some anti-science brands of radical feminism, who argue that the New Reproductive Technologies (combined with in- intervention in creasing childbirth) represent a threat to women's power to control reproduction and childbirth. Ironically, Shulamith Fires- tone in The Dialectic of Sex ar- gued rather the opposite. con cluding that women would only gain their liberation if they stopped having children "naturally" with men, and had them through donor insemina- tion. This leads to the second question; the need for these tech- niques to be available to all women, on demand, regardless of marital status and sexual orientation. It is a myth that women have control over reproduction in The dominant class society. mode of organising reproduction is through the patriarchal family and the ruling class is having problems in dealing with these new techni- ques, not because they are such amazing scientific developments, but precisely because they can undercut the traditional notion of motherhood and fatherhood. What we see, for example, in the debate around the Embryology Bill is a desperate at- tempt, by the far right, to assert the biological role of fatherhood and to limit access both to DI and the NRTs to single women and lesbian women. It is the social relations in which children are reproduced that are focussing the attention of several right-wing amendments to this Bill. Some of these are lunatic amendments, which are just not implementable. One wants to alter a clause in the Bill which says the husband of the women should be the father of the child, and where a different man donates the sperm, to ensure that the sperm donator is the father! Another amendment secks to restrict ac- cess for single and lesbian women. Donor In- semination is already very restricted on the NHS, and generally only available to women with a male partner, so this amendment is very dangerous. Donor Insemination should really not need to be considered in this Bill al all; it is a very simple technique which has been used widely for over a century. Infertility treatment, involving advanced In-vitro fer- tilisation is at the moment often restricted by the expense involved: and these facilities. should be available to all women and men on the NHS. The message of the New Reproductive Techniques is not wholly positive for women, Page 10
FEATURES MALE CHURCH, MALE PARLTAMENT WOMENS: LIVES. NO To MALE CONTROL Would women be more liberated if they turned to donor insemination? however, because they not only put pressure on women to fulfil their lives through reproduction, but they also put pressure on women to have the "perfect baby'. Socialists must take a critical stance on both these issues.
We favour giving women more choice, more freedom to fulfil a variety of roles in their lives, including the right to choose not to have children. This is why the threat to abortion time limits posed by Anne Widdecombe's proposed amendment is such an enormous threat to the gains we have won.
Abortion rights are a separate issue from those raised in this Bill which focusses on Embryo experimentation, human infertility and the New Reproductive techniques. The right-wing are trying to confuse the issues to get government time to cut abortion time limits to overtur the gains made in the 1967 Act. They hope to use the new consensus over the possible 'viability" of the foetus at an earlier stage to stop abortion after 24, 22 or 20 weeks. The fight against this amendment will inevitably be a top priority for socialist feminists who have traditionally understood the significance of the '67 Act and the fight for the right to choose.
It is because we favour giving women a real choice about how to run their lives that we also take a critical stance on the issue of disabilty posed in this debate. We defend research that helps to identify genetic disorders but we also campaign for facilities for the disabled to give women a real choice about carrying a disabled foetus up to term. Finally we suuport the right, defended in the existing Bill,
of any woman who bares a child to keep it if she chooses, regardless of any legal contract. We also support the ban on commercial surrogacy but will defend the right of women to have children for other women if they so choose.
Many of these demands can only be fully realised in the context of a free, comprehensive, state health care system which responds to the needs of working class people and women.
Labour Parties should ensure they are informed about these issues and Labour MPs have prepared a whole series of progressive amendments ready to put before Parliament in this debate. If such amendments are not forthcoming or are voted down, they should vote against this Bill. Unfortunately the Labour Party, in dramatic contrast to the far right, is unprepared for this debate and is beginning to concede the crucial argument on abortion time limits.
The task of revolutionary socialists cannot therefore be clearer. It is to get out onto the streets and into the trade union and labour party branches to organise a massive