demand!
In the past few months thousands of people have marched, lobbied and picketted against David Alton's attempt to reduce the abortion time limit to 18 weeks. The TUC and the Labour Party have now agreed to sponsor the
March 19 demonstration organised by Fight Alton's Bill
(FAB). The Alton bill is now in parliamentary committee, due for its third reading in May. It is now likely that when the bill is voted on the proposed time limit will not be 18 weeks but 22 or 24.
The focus of the argument is now whether a 24 week limit is reasonable. While nearly 6000 women had abortions later than
18 weeks in 1986, less than thirty had abortions later than 24 weeks. Why then is it so important for the pro-choice movement to defeat an amended bill, and what arguments should be used against it? GILL LEE reports.
Left: an NHS nurse protests against the Alton bill: cuts in the NHS have helped restrict the operation of the
1967 act
Below: Wendy Savage speaking against the Alton bill at Central Hall,
Westminster before the bill's second reading: the best way to end late abortions is to campaign against the conditions which cause them
ABORTION
THE ANTI-ABORTIONISTS hope by passing the Alton bill to prepare for other restrictions to the 1967 act.
David Alton and his supporters in Life and SPUC believe that all abortion is murder. For them getting : the bill passed, in whatever form, would be the first real anti-abortion victory since the 1967 act was passed. It would be the first stage in a struggle to outlaw abortion completely, and to criminalise women who have abortions.
The '67 act was one of the major gains of the women's movement in the 1960s
For the first time many women were freed from the tyranny of unwanted pregnancy and the horrors of back-street abortions.
Alton's supporters polemicise against the 1967 act as having given women 'free abortion on demand' the 1967 act did not legalise abortion. Instead it created some exceptions to the general situation of illegal abortion. A woman was allowed an abortion if she could convince two doctors that the risk to her health or that of her existing children was greater than if the pregnancy was terminated; or if the foetus she was carrying was abnormal.
FIGHT
ALTON
The operation of the 1967 act was
Some within the FAB campaign - for example the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) — argue we should not defend the 1967 act precisely because it does not establish women's control over their fertility as a right. But if the Alton bill were passed it would restrict even further the right of women to abortion and would make the struggle for free abortion on demand even harder. The anti-abortionists understand this. So
The fundamental argument against any amendment to the 1967 act is that we have to establish the principle of a woman's right to decide if and when to have an abortion, and to oppose further restriction of that right.
In no society in the world, with the exception of the Soviet Union under the Bolsheviks, has abortion been available on women's demand. This is not a coincidence. Abortion is a class issue but not only in the way the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) pose the issue - that rich women will always be able to afford illegal abortions while poor women will not — although of course this is true.
Abortion is a class issue because at present the state takes as its right the decision on something which is fundamental to women's ability to control their lives. For women to control their fertility would be an important challenge to the right of the ruling class to control the conditions of production and reproduction. It would challenge the idea that women's role is simply that of the reproduction of the workforce.
As well as being a class issue, abortion is a women's issue, affecting all women of all classes, although affecting them differently. Both rich and poor women are criminalised by having illegal abortions, and all women suffer from the ideological implications of lack of control over fertility, from the idea that they are 15
16 premature baby is wanted by its mother, More may vote for the bill if it is incapable of deciding for themselves.
While the radical right — such as Tory MP Theresa Gorman - support women's right to abortion on the basis that women have the right to dispose of their own property, the mainstream position of the ruling class has always been one of opposition to women having the right to choose on abortion, while sometimes supporting abortion in individual cases. For example, the ruling class has mothers are not 'fit' mothers, and has allowed them, sometimes forced them, to have abortions.
Former Tory cabinet minister Keith Joseph is on record as advocating abortion for wornen of low status groups (such as black or poor women). Imperialism uses population control, including forced sterilisation and promotion of abortion, in a racist way to assert its
The ruling class has no qualms about the 'morality' of abortion. The ruling class is, however, very clear that women should not have the right to choose on abortion. Instead parliament should lay down the parameters for exceptions to abortion's illegal status, and doctors should decide if women fit into these exempted categories. The 'viability' argument THE MAIN argument used by those who argue for a time limit of 24 weeks is that of 'viability'. Both the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have indicated their support for a 24 week time limit, although they have indicated that they would prefer to see this done through an amendment to the infant life preservation act (which currently lays down the 28 week limit in England and Wales) rather than to the 1967 abortion act.
The crux of the argument on 'viability' for its supporters is that a foetus of 24 weeks is capable of life and therefore is entitled to the state's protection, irrespective of the wishes of the woman carrying the foetus. But, in reality, a 24-week-old foetus is in a fundamentally different relationship to the woman than a 24 week premature baby. The one is completely dependent on the woman for its food, its oxygen, its very existence, the other is dependent on the artificial creation of the atmosphere of the woman's body, temperature, food supply, artificial oxygen, by hospital staff.
A 24 week-old foetus which would be aborted is to the woman something which is unwanted, affecting her life in a way she does not desire. A 24 week
ABORTION and therefore everything should be done to keep it alive.
The anti-choice movement have long used horror stories of live foetuses, resulting from late abortions, as an emotive argument against women's right to
The most well known of these stories were those contained in the now discredited anti-abortionists' bible Babies for
The point of an abortion is to abort as little stress to the woman as possible. Abortions properly performed should never result in live foetuses. The much publicised stories of nurses watching foetuses struggling for life should never occur. To accept that the foetus has rights, only permissible until the development of the foetus reaches a certain stage, is to concede restrictions on women's rights to do as they will with their bodies.
'abortion is a class issue and
La women's issue'
To reduce women's choice on abortion to an issue of the stage of development of the foetus, is to open the door to future restrictions as technology advances and even younger babies can be kept alive by the creation of even better artificial wombs.
Furthermore, Alton's bill puts the onus on doctors to prove that any particular abortion had been carried out within the time limits. Because doctors would allow themselves a four week safety margin — as is common at the moment — effectively the limit would be 20 weeks. Thus, the thirty women a year the 24 week option is deemed to affect would in reality be many more. A 24 week time limit would affect 2-3000 women who currently have legal abortions each year.
There are many reasons for women seeking abortions after 20 weeks. There are very young women who, owing to inadequate sex education, have not realised they were pregnant. Many women seek late abortions because their circumstances change during their pregnancy; their companion may leave, they may be made homeless; may simply change their minds. Any restriction of women's choice reinforces the idea that women are not capable of making correct choices, and instead need doctors or the state to decide for
At its second reading, 36 Labour MPs voted for the bill, and 19 did not vote.
amended to 24 weeks thus breaking Labour Party policy and voting against women's rights.
The best way to end late abortions is campaign against the conditions to which cause them: poor sex education, poor facilities, restrictions on choice, NHS delays.
MPs who really want to reduce the numbers of late abortions could do this in ways other than punishing women by voting for a 24 week amendment. They could work to improve NHS facilities by campaigning against the cuts and by campaigning with the National Abortion Campaign for an expansion in abortion facilities and free pregnancy testing in doctors' surgeries, hospitals and cli nics.
Twenty per cent of late abortions are currently carried out on women who have applied for an abortion before twelve weeks.
MPs could campaign with us for a bill which would establish free abortion on demand, and so allow women to get safe, early abortions on their own say so. In countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands where abortion is available on demand up to twelve weeks, the rate of late abortions is much less than here.
No matter what changes were made to decrease the need for late abortions however, abortion must always be available to women as a last resort, and it must be available as and when women require it.
The importance of developing an understanding of the programmatic importance of abortion for women's liberation and socialism is shown by the Labour vote on Alton's bill and the fact that even some members of the Campaign group voted for the bill.
The Labour Party has consistently refused to apply a three line whip on the issue and even the Campaign group has refused to hold to account its members who voted the wrong way.
Indeed, the Campaign group has refused to support the call for a three line whip. Even 'left wing' MPs are incapable of understanding that women's right to control their bodies is as much a class issue as membership of NATO, attacks on the NHS, or privatisation. This is an indication of the groundwork still to be done in showing the connections between abortion, women's liberation and socialism • • Gill Lee is co-author, with Leonora Lloyd and Valerie Coultas, of a Socialist Outlook pamphlet, Fight Alton's Bill - Abortion and Women's Liberation, available at 50p (plus 20p pEp) from Socialist Outlook, PO Box 705, London, SW19 1HA.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK nod March/April 1988