Embryology Bill reducing the time limit on abortion from 28 to 24 weeks, with certain excoptions.
It was a defeat for women in the struggle to take control of our
This must bodies and our lives.
not he obscured by the fact that it could have been much worse.
The oucome raflects a major shift arourki the question of abortion over the last decade.
the "pro-life organisations have made no headway with their life begins at conception" argument they have been very successful at focusing on the question of time limits: The abortion debate is no limits:
longer centred around women but on foetuses - at what point can they survive outside the womb?
It has moved from the political domain to the scientific.
EDITORIAL/UPDATE
So where should socialists stand? Fully in support of the right of imperialist line of ditching the
We oppose Gorbachev's attempts to cow the national movement,
1967 ACT BROKEN
This shift is the result of many complex factors - the decline of the women's movement; the ascendency of the right; and new realism in the labour movement.
This has been mirrored, to some extent, in the campaign in nights.
abortion
Strategy has often been dictated by parliamentary procedure and political expediency. This, along with a pragmatic rejection of 4 woman's right to choose a, led to the division of the pro choice forpes between the issues af abortion and donor insemination (DI) and the weakening of the campaign.
To write women back into the equation is the only way to win back those MPs. particularly in the Labour ranks, who have previously been 28 week stalwarts:
but whose convictions have now attention given to the abortion issue and the questien of obscured research has another aspect of the Bill - access to DI and infertility treatments.
attempt to do so is a reactionary measure that must be opposed.
have been at top level only.
armed insurrection or a despairing appeal for imperialist support.
ing crisis in which new concessions can be won.
in the west as they face up to the important tasks ahead of them.
At the third reading in the Lords, the Government inserted a clause specifying that no woman could be given access to DI or infertility
'unless account has been taken of the welfare of the child who may be born as a result of the treatment."
this amendment, the intention Es to prohibit access by women in a politically acceptable
Thas the language and focus is on the welfare of the child rather discriminating than explically
But the 'wellere of the child" has long been counterposed to the welfare of the woman. As lesbian mothers who have lost custody cases know, judges" view of the child's wellare is all 10o often shapod by prejudice and support for the nuclear family.
The wording of the clause may be vague and open to interpretation, but then so was Section 28 - and that has been effective in
This does not mean that socialists would always argue for a full- scale confrontation on this issue, especially where conditions are less than favourable: a serious approach to tactical timing is also important alongside a defence of principle. The evident solid mass support in
Lithuania, and even the parallel movements in Estonia and Latvia are not likely to be enough to force Gorbachev to back down in the short term, and some form of temporary compromise may be necessary. It would also be useful it the Baltic republics coordinated their efforts in the push for national independence, and if they made clear that they want support not from the imperialist governments but from the workers of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately the limited political horizons of the nationalist leadership in Lithuania focus on outside assistance from the capitalist and imperialist leaders, and do not extend to calls for working class solidarity - or even to working class mobilisation in Lithuania itself. The tentative links that have been made between the new governments in the Baltic states appear fo
The longer-term situation offers more hope of allies for the
Lithuanians in their conflict with the Kremlin bureaucracy, showing that there are more choices open than simply between an immediate
Among the first decisions of the new Moscow city council, now taken over by radical oppositionists, was a resolution of sympathy with
Lithuania. And as Gorbachev tries to crack the whip over workers in
Russia and the other republics, the likelihood will increase of a widen-
As the illusion of Gorbachev promoting a revolution from above' disappears under a tide of increasingly authoritarian moves. the necessity for a genuine political revolution from below becomes ever more obvious. The new socialist currents now emerging in the Soviet workers' movement will need every possible solidarity from socialists and reinforcing scil-censorship bigotry. It is vital that socialists do not dodge this issuc but expose the ideology behind it and the effects the clausc will have.
Both the "welfare of the child"
amendment and the rcduction in time limits underline the Tact that we must now push for the Bill as a whole to be rejected.
in favour of embryo research continuing is the only serious defeat suffered by the forces of extreme reaction so far, and the
14 day time limit makes it at best
It is crucial that the time hetween now and the final roading of the Bill is spent building for the demonstration on June 2nd.
Mass mobilisalems are the only way to tum this situation around.
We must show the right that public opinion is not on their
By Rebecca Flemming