12.05.2004

Battling for control

Over recent years 'pro-lifers' have not so much attacked a woman's right to choose directly: they have adopted salami tactics. Eddie Ford revisits the fight for safe abortions, the history of counterattacks, and questions Respect's significant silence on this vital issue

In this week's Socialist Worker a relatively long letter appears under the title, 'Bush has no right to control our bodies'. Writing from Canada, the joint authors tell us: "Over one million people came out for a historic march on April 25 in Washington DC to demonstrate for abortion rights. The National Mall, which has been the site of large mobilisations for decades, was teeming with women from all manner of backgrounds, taking nearly two hours to pass a single point on the 2.5-mile march. The Bush administration is attacking women and their reproductive freedoms. The passage of partial birth legislation and anti-choice Supreme Court appointments have women fearing for the fragile gains they have won .... Hundreds of thousands chanted passionately: 'My body, my choice', 'Pro-sex, pro-gay, pro-choice all the way' and 'Get your rosaries off my ovaries'" (May 8).

Stirring stuff. If born-again Bush had been under the illusion that his attempts to impose a fundamentalist 'pro-life' agenda upon American society would prove to be something of a cake-walk, he will now have to think again. Undoubtedly our Socialist Workers Party comrades will continue to cover, and cheer on, the democratic struggle of pro-choice forces in the US and elsewhere for that matter. However, now it only serves to draw attention to the comrades' squalid manoeuvrings on this issue within Respect, which has actually led them to oppose - as in Islington - a straightforward motion which supported abortion rights. The word 'hypocrisy' instantly comes to mind. They loudly condemn George Bush. Yet they keep deadly quite about the other George here in Britain: George Galloway, who heads Respect's London list for the June 10 European elections.

The battle for safe abortions is far from over. Every year across the world about 50 million women have a termination. Around half of these are carried out illegally. The World Health Organisation estimates that somewhere in the region of 200,000 women die annually from the effects of unsafe abortion. In Latin America they are the second most common cause of death among women of childbearing age. These facts alone starkly demonstrate how poverty and ignorance combine with catholic moralism and state reaction to produce a staggering loss of life.

Reforms under capitalism should always be viewed as temporary, never as permanent gains. That is certainly true of abortion rights. The US may be the richest and most powerful country on the planet, but when it comes to women's rights the 'pro-lifers' are increasingly setting the agenda. For anti-abortionist crusaders the golden age began in 1873 and lasted till 1973 and the Roe v Wade test case in Texas. The federal government passed the Comstock Act in 1873, which prohibited all devices and information pertaining to "preventing conception and producing abortion". State after state quickly followed suit.

For 100 years abortion remained effectively illegal. Of course, that did not mean that desperate women did not seek ways of ending unwanted pregnancies. Some authorities estimate that during this dark period of prohibition as many as 1.2 million illegal abortions happened each year, with many thousands dying or getting horribly injured in the process. Yet the 'pro-lifers' look back with fondness to this time - and want to bring it back.

Over recent years anti-abortionists have had increasing success in the US - but not through a direct assault on abortion rights. Rather they have adopted salami tactics - both at a state and a federal level - whereby the grounds of having an abortion are whittled away to the point of effectively disappearing. Not content with that 'slowly does it' approach, an ugly coalition of bigoted catholics, born-again protestants, ultra-rightists and survivalist nutters have been on the rampage attacking clinics which offer abortion services: there have been shootings, bombings and acid attacks. During the 1990s 'wanted' signs giving the names, addresses and phone numbers of abortion providers were distributed across America. Two featured doctors were murdered in Florida. Simultaneously organisations like the Army of God have published step-by-step instructions on how make bombs. In the war for 'life' there have been many casualties.

When it comes to Britain we may not - yet - have to contend with baying mobs or a growing fundamentalist bloc in parliament, but we must never forget the ferocious struggle that was fought to legalise abortion on this side of the Atlantic, nor the succession of battles that have been waged since the 1967 Abortion Act to defend and extend the rights won by women and the working class.

Prior to World War II arguments in favour of birth control were taken up by both eugenicists/Malthusians and communists - but obviously from somewhat different standpoints. One of the great campaigners was Stella Browne. She openly argued for sexual freedom for women and men, and also for contraception and particularly abortion rights. Browne was a leading activist in the CPGB of the 1920s-30s and later on in the Labour Party. She challenged the idea that unmarried female comrades should "always practise abstinence", and passionately argued that women should have the right to live as they wanted and should be encouraged to fully express themselves.

Browne reports a remark from a male comrade at a Communist Party meeting: "On the subject of sex equality, the majority of my women comrades are as unsound as their capitalist-minded sisters. It is time that some of our sex-obsessed comrades realised that woman's so-called slavery to man is solely owing to her economic dependence on him and can only end when the capitalist regime ends." This summed up the dismissive, economistic attitude of many - though by no means all - male CPGB comrades at the time.

Browne advocated both birth control and abortion on demand, and held many public meetings about the work of Alexandra Kollontai in the Soviet Union, and on the agitation for birth control in Germany and Austria, led by leftwing socialists and communists. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, for example, contraception, abortion and divorce were made available on demand. However, the CPGB did not have anything like a clear position on such vital questions until the mid-1920s, when the leadership came round to the idea that women, in order to fully participate in the struggle, had to be free from constant pregnancy. The CPGB subsequently began to agitate for birth control. Meetings were held which were packed by women desperate to find out about accessible birth control that did not make them ill. During the 1926 General Strike CPGB members, amongst others, distributed leaflets to women concerning contraception. The catholic church counterattacked, stating that they were "the kind of women who visit matinees and sit with cigarettes between their painted lips". There were even claims that communists were using working class women in sinister, Dr Frankenstein-type experiments!

The Workers' Birth Control Group was formed in 1934, arguing for safe contraception but also for safe, legal and free abortion. It campaigned not only for the right to abortion, but for amnesties for women who were imprisoned for having undergone them. At the 1935 Labour Party conference, the Labour women's motion in favour of birth control was narrowly defeated with 1,850,000 votes against and 1,530,000 for. But the battle continued. Women were still being criminalised and were dying from illegal abortions. The issue would not go away.

It was important for campaigners to highlight the tragedies caused by illegal abortion. Although many such operations were successful, there was no doubting the real risk of death or serious illness. Statistics from this time are difficult to obtain, as most abortions were recorded as miscarriages. However, we do know of the practices resorted to by desperate, mainly working class, women.

Not all terminations were performed by sinister operatives up dark back streets. Most were induced by drugs obtained from herbalists, chemists or stalls in market places. Women heard of them by word of mouth or through well-thumbed tracts, such as the 1930s booklet The shadow of the stork. From generation to generation methods to 'bring on menstruation' were handed down. Women passed enema syringes round their communities and workplaces or resorted to lying in a scalding bath. Others took large doses of Beechams Powders, castor oil or washing powder in gin.

Some of these abortifacients actually produced results, but of course at great risk. They did not usually have a specific effect on the uterus, but were more often than not general poisons, one of whose side effects was to bring on a miscarriage. Such poisoning caused vomiting and convulsions which could not but seriously damage those in already poor health.

Along with taking poisons, women often attempted to self-abort using knitting needles, hairpins, crotchet hooks or skewers. Can you imagine the effect such implements had on women, who used no antibiotics or anaesthetics? Between 1926 and 1935 around 500 died every year from such abortions. Yet, despite the known dangers, women often had no choice.

The birth control clinics that existed were usually based on the principles of the eugenics movement and were paid for by charitable donations from bourgeois women. However, communists and socialists began to become involved and in Glasgow a clinic was set up by Labour and Cooperative women, who received financial help from the trade unions. Those campaigning for birth control were regularly charged under obscenity laws - pamphlets were seized and destroyed. One with the title, Family limitation, was described as a "dirty book", as it argued that women should have pleasure from sexual intercourse - obviously a deeply subversive idea. Family limitation contained instructions on how to insert a diaphragm, illustrated with a finger inserted in a vagina. This caused outrage in polite society. However, contraception slowly gained respectability, though abortion remained a taboo subject.

Stella Browne continued to campaign. She openly admitted to having had an illegal abortion - a scandalous confession in the 1930s. For Browne birth control and abortion were part of a wider transformation in the material circumstances and social relationships between men and women. The ending of capitalism alone could not liberate women.

Every now and then throughout the 30s headlines would appear about a tragic death brought on by a back-street or self-abortion. Yet it was openly acknowledged that 'women of substance' could pay for a safe, 'therapeutic' termination. Working class women, on the other hand, not only took their life in their hands, but were criminalised into the bargain.

In 1938 there was a landmark trial, when a leading gynaecologist was acquitted of performing an abortion on a 14-year-old girl, who was a victim of multiple rape. The rapists were officers of the Royal Horse Guards who not only made her pregnant but inflicted serious physical injuries and left her traumatised. One doctor refused to perform a therapeutic abortion, stating: "As she was raped by officers, she might be carrying a future prime minister of England".

However, the gynaecologist, Dr Alec Bourne, who agreed to perform an abortion insisted that it was the only option. He had acted in "good faith of the patient's welfare". From 1938 until 1967 it was up to the prosecution to prove that a doctor had not acted in "good faith", but this obviously only covered medical practitioners and not the unofficial network.

Despite this case abortion was the main cause of maternal death in Britain until the 1967 Abortion Act. It is estimated that between 20,000 and 100,000 abortions were performed every year - the higher figure seems more likely. In the early 60s Holloway prison alone held 44 women who had been sentenced for performing illegal abortions. One said, "I knew it was against the law, but I didn't feel it was wrong. Women have to help each other." Before the 1967 act, the law did allow abortions in very limited circumstances, when a woman's life was deemed to be in imminent danger - in 1966, for example, 9,700 abortions were performed by the NHS and an estimated 10,000 were carried out in private clinics. But for the vast majority of working class women the only option was back-street abortions, which caused unimaginable trauma, pain, as well as sterility and sometimes death - then there was the fear of discovery and prosecution.

During the 1960s, pressure from below, not least from the new women's movement, was making itself felt, resulting in the introduction of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill in 1966. This was introduced by Liberal MP David Steel (now of course Sir David Steel, speaker of the Scottish parliament). The bill took 18 months to get from its committee stage to what became the 1967 Abortion Act - which was in parliamentary terms quick.

There can be little doubt that high-profile media coverage had a big impact - every opinion poll showed that there was mass support for abortion reform. In turn, of course, this heavily influenced MPs, who were acutely aware of where mass sentiment stood on this issue - so, if you wanted to keep your parliamentary seat... However, as we know, the act that was eventually passed did not enshrine the legal right for women to have an abortion on demand - two medical practitioners needed to be of "good faith" that a termination was in the interest and welfare of the woman. Nevertheless, it represented a tremendous step forward.

The 1967 Abortion Act was one of several progressive changes to the law in post-war economic boom Britain: the ending of capital punishment (1965), the semi-decriminalisation of homosexual relationships (1967), major reform of divorce (1969), relaxation of censorship, etc. The Sex Discrimination Act and Equal Pay Act followed. Women were entitled to pensions in their own right and paid maternity leave.

These legal changes were accompanied by a vast expansion in work for women, better access to higher education and the mass availability of the contraceptive pill on the NHS, first introduced on a limited, trial basis in 1961. Yes, these gains were partial and stunted and all managed carefully from above - the Abortion Act certainly being no exception. However, they were gains nevertheless and reflected - albeit indirectly - the influence of the working class and, it almost goes without saying, were enough to enrage and antagonise reactionary opinion in Britain.

Then came the 1970s, which saw the women's movement mushroom, with its militant demands for equal pay, education and opportunity, 24-hour nurseries, free contraception and of course free abortion on demand - not the pinched version offered up by the 1967 act. The fight for women's rights had become re-energised and re-radicalised - fully so when the official trade union movement, after a sluggish, even hostile initial beginning, threw its still substantial weight behind some key demands.

The words of Stella Browne, uttered in 1931, were starting to resonate again: "Abortion must be the key to a new world for women, not a bulwark for things as they are, economically or biologically. Abortion should not be either a prerequisite of the legal wife only, nor merely a last remedy against illegitimacy. It should be available for any woman, without insolent inquisitions, nor ruinous financial charges, nor tangles of red tape. For our bodies are our own." This was as clear a statement for the women of the 1970s as it had been 40 years previously.

Naturally, the new act had its opponents. Shocked by the published figures, which showed the number of abortions rising steadily each year (50,000 in 1969, 100,000 in 1975), a powerful alliance emerged between sections of old, traditional Labour - which often depended on catholic votes - the catholic church itself and pretty much the whole of the Conservative Party. In 1975 James White, the rightwing Labour MP for Glasgow Pollok, introduced a private member's bill, restricting the criteria for an abortion and narrowing time limits. Had his bill been adopted, it would have undermined the 1967 Act and knocked women's rights back a generation.

However, times had changed. Parliamentary lobbying may have brought about the change in the law in 1967 - but now mass demonstrations come to the fore. 1975 was not 1967.

While James White MP had probably anticipated a rather tame affair, argued out on the floor of the House of Commons, he and his supporters found themselves the target of a concerted campaign fought out in public and on the streets. The fight against White was tough - and liberating. Women were becoming empowered and self-activating. Many thousands of women, in the organisations on the left and many not in anything, found a voice and were not prepared to be dictated to by some wretchedly reactionary Labour MP.

The campaign itself grew out of a relatively small meeting which agreed to set up the National Abortion Campaign - and throughout the rest of the 1970s it battled on, against onslaught after onslaught on the 1967 legislation. The International Marxist Group undoubtedly played a leading role, but others were prominent too, including the SWP, the 'official' CPGB, various Maoists and a growing array of socialist and radical feminists, loosely grouped around this or that journal.

Every time an anti-abortion MP won a place in the ballot there was a new private member's bill - after White there was William Benyon and John Corrie and finally the infamous David Alton. Within weeks of that first NAC meeting an impressively big demonstration was organised, where 40,000 marched. Petitions, pickets, occupations followed. NAC members and supporters systematically disrupted the activities of the then arch-enemy, the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child. Women chained themselves to the railings at the House of Commons and protested in cathedrals and churches.

That was not all. Despite the economic recession, the Wilson government's 'social contract' and the disappointment which had replaced the euphoria following the defeat of the Ted Heath government in 1974, the trade union movement was still fit and strong. Women were joining in large numbers and many of the conventional barriers were being dismantled. On the first, huge, pro-abortion demonstration in London there were trade union banners from all the white collar unions, trades councils, post office workers and engineers. Then in 1979 there was a massive demonstration called by the TUC (yes, by the TUC), when wave after wave of banners from every trade union and every part of the country swept into Hyde Park, TUC general secretary Len Murray at its head.

Looking back, it might seem strange that we should have to revisit the argument for free and safe abortions again. Stranger still the fact that opposition to abortion has been become an issue again due to public courtship of the Muslim Association of Britain by Respect's leading spokesperson and the fact that the leaders of Britain's largest leftwing organisation, who once took a lead fighting reactionaries such as White, Benyon, Corrie, etc, now claim that abortion is a matter of private conscience.

But it is not. It is deeply political. Women should, as a basic democratic right, have control over their own bodies.