22.09.2004

Dishonest attempt to derail pro-choice initiative

Both the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Action are trying to stop a new pro-abortion campaign from even being launched, warns Anne McShane

t is clear that the propaganda war against abortion is intensifying. Screaming headlines in the Daily Mail and The Sun denounce teenage girls who have terminations and demand action against doctors who carry them out without parental consent. David Steel, who as a young MP introduced the present legislation back in 1967, now announces that he believes there should be a cut in the current 24-week time limit for abortions.

The recent Channel Four documentary My foetus has also re-ignited an old debate. Made by a filmmaker who considered it necessary to show abortion ‘as it really is’ (the ‘termination of a potential life’), it focused only on how unpleasant the procedure can be and ignored the social reality that leads so many women to end their pregnancy. Such programmes are grist to the mill of those like the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which argues that human life begins at conception and abortion therefore is ‘murder’.

The rank hypocrisy of all this is breath-taking. The ‘pro-life’ brigade are morally outraged by a women deciding to remove from her own body what is often little more than a collection of cells the size of a thumbnail. But, when it comes to the bombing and wrecking of Iraq, IMF-imposed poverty in Africa, capitalism’s Aids pandemic and all the other horrors of the system, the Murdoch press, the religious right, Spuc, etc remain silent or merely shed crocodile tears.

Their real agenda is not to save the unborn. It is to control women and curb their social freedoms. Using the ‘discovery’ that foetuses are potentially viable at four or five months, it is expected that in the next session of parliament a private member’s bill will be introduced, aimed at banning abortions after the first three months of pregnancy. With an international attack on women’s rights, most notably in the United States, in full swing, there is no doubt that reactionaries in Britain are eager to follow suit.

The initiative taken by Terry Conway and Tessa Van Gelderen - members of the International Socialist Group - was therefore extremely timely. They called a planning meeting on September 16 at Camden Town Hall in London with a view to setting up a national campaign to defend abortion rights. Unfortunately it was a women-only event; however, it brought together a range of forces. With almost 40 present and a long list of apologies from prominent left activists, it promised to be a good start.

Comrades Conway and Van Gelderen, emphasised that getting organised was urgent. They were worried by the slant of media coverage and the announcement by Tony Blair that it was time to look again at abortion in the light of “new medical evidence”. Debate was being shifted away from woman and onto ‘rights’ for the foetus.

The issue was particularly serious for young women, who are the most likely to have abortions after the proposed three months - usually due to the difficulty of accessing services. In addition, although 90% of abortions are carried out before three months, there are many women who do not know they are pregnant until after that point - especially older, menopausal women, who are at most risk of carrying a foetus with severe congenital problems. Thus, through this targeting of late abortions, the most desperate women will be forced to carry on with a pregnancy. They will be denied control of their own body.

Others echoed these concerns. Some had taken part in the 1967 campaign and in the battle against the 1981 Alton bill. They said they had a feeling of déjà vu, with the resurrection of the debate about the rights of the unborn and the vilification of ‘selfish’ women who have late abortions. One young woman, whose mother had been active in the 1967 campaign, spoke of her growing unease when watching media reports and her relief when she heard of the meeting. There was also a new generation starting to get involved - with three 16-year-old women present.

But a damper was put on the proceedings by Candy Udwin, speaking “on behalf of the SWP”. She told us that there was really nothing to worry about - “it would be extremely difficult to encroach on existing rights” and indeed “we could actually be in a position of winning abortion on request”. This was a reference to the fact that Steel, keen to undermine opposition to legislative change, has suggested that abortion could be provided as a right up to three months (at the moment the approval of two doctors is needed). Linked with this new ‘right’ is, of course, a plan to virtually ban abortion after three months.

Strangely comrade Udwin seemed to want us to fall into this trap. She said that if there was a real attack - and she doubted that one was coming - we should then launch a campaign. In any event, “if there was a real threat to abortion rights the meeting to found the campaign would be far bigger and more significant than this. This meeting does not really represent anything.”

Thankfully not many shared her complacent attitude. A CPGB representative criticised her for what was in effect an attempt to stop us mapping out a campaigning strategy. We needed to set the agenda, not wait around for parliament to introduce legislation and then react. And there were many things that could be done in the here and now. Eg, solidarity with women in the US, Ireland and the Middle East, demanding earlier access to abortion services, countering media misinformation, etc. Abortion, in other words, is hardly a non-issue.

We said that the CPGB was submitting a motion to the forthcoming Respect conference that would commit the organisation to campaigning clearly for a woman’s right to choose. The SWP’s Lindsey German has stated that Respect, along with all the major parties, ought to allow its elected representatives a ‘conscience vote’ on this question. Elected representatives ought, of course, to be free to exercise their conscience when it comes to their own personal decisions - a female MP, for example, have every right in the event of an unwanted pregnancy to forgo an abortion herself. But they have no right whatsoever to support legislation which deprives others of that choice.

Speaking afterwards, Candy Udwin assured me that there was no way she would support our motion. She would not have anything to do with a group that “refused to work with muslims”.

It is unsurprising that the SWP wants to pull the plug on any pro-choice campaign. It wants to keep controversy out of Respect, where George Galloway has publicly come out against abortion - to the applause of the Muslim Association of Britain and the embarrassment of the SWP. Incidentally to differ with MAB over abortion is hardly akin to refusing to work with muslims.

But there were other problems during the meeting. Key among those was the demand for Abortion Rights (AR) to have exclusive control over any forthcoming campaign. AR was formed in 2003 through a merger of the National Abortion Campaigns and the Abortion Law Reform Association. It appears to be dominated by Socialist Action - which immediately sends alarm bells ringing. SA has a well known reputation for being Ken Livingstone’s highly paid flunkies and establishing all manner of tightly controlled little empires for aspiring bureaucrats and middle class careerists.

Also of concern is SA’s attitude towards men. Sarah Colborne said that although men were formally allowed, in reality AR was women-only. She has already previously made it clear at a European Social Forum women’s meeting that in principle she is against men having any decision-making rights. Some others also did not want any involvement from men.

To her credit, Candy Udwin opposed this separatism, as did her SWP comrades. She was supported by the CPGB and a number of young women.

It was agreed that the next meeting - to be hosted under the auspices of AR - would make the decision on the woman-only issue. But this meeting would itself be closed to men. Excluding men is a major error. The implication is clear - abortion is a women’s issue, and all women should unite together as sisters.

Our approach is entirely different. The world of women, like the world of men, is divided along class lines. Moreover, we consider abortion to be a fundamental democratic question. Therefore abortion should be included in the immediate programmes and priorities of the left and working class movement. We seek not the unity of women, but the unity of working class men and women against bourgeois society.

Finally the question of slogans was discussed. The CPGB argued that we should put a woman’s right to choose at the centre of the struggle: as early as possible, as late as necessary. The 1967 act is inadequate and we should not content ourselves with simply being defensive. Unfortunately there was a pervasive conservatism. AR, for example, does not stand for free abortion on demand, but has a vague, ambiguous, formula calling for ‘changes in the law’.

We ended with the organisers agreeing to hand over the reins to AR - wrongly, in my opinion. The next meeting on October 20 will be at their offices. The contact list was handed over to AR director Anne Quesney.

What could have been a promising start is in danger of becoming diverted by the petty bourgeois feminism of Socialist Action and its AR front - not to mention SWP attempts to derail the whole thing. However, the issue will not go away and there is certainly the potential for a mass campaign - one that can link up with the working class movement both here in Britain and internationally.