Abortion Rights Under Attack: What do we do? Stand up, fight back!

by Kim Gasper-Rabuck · Published January 25, 2022 · Updated February 13, 2022

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) made it clear in a brief two-hour hearing on December 1, 2021 that there is intent on finding the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban constitutional. In all likelihood, this will lead to complete overturning of Roe v. Wade, and begin the outlawing of abortion across the country. If this comes to pass, it will amount to the overthrow of a historic advance for women's rights; as well as undermine life-saving health practice, hard-fought political rights, and bodily autonomy for more than half of the population.

There are approximately 170 million women and people who can become pregnant (PWCBP) in their lifetimes living in the United States today. Of that population, an estimated 42.5 million will have at least one abortion in their lifetimes. The end of Roe v. Wade will begin the process of closing access for millions of people, accelerating the phenomenon of forced pregnancy and greatly increasing the rate of unsafe abortions along with a host other negative consequences.

The Right has made gains in attacking reproductive rights, reducing access, and now potentially toppling the legal right to abortion altogether through coordinated efforts at all levels of the state since Roe was first won. This is not the result of changing public opinion, which has actually been increasing in favor of reproductive rights over the last decades. The decline of abortion can be attributed to the failure and unwillingness of the Democratic Party to defend and expand abortion rights and access amid an incessant and full-spectrum assault by the forces of the anti-abortion Right. For instance, state legislatures have been dismantling abortion access through the passage of more than 1,100 restrictions since 1973. As Roe teeters at the precipice, neither the Democratic Party and its aligned liberal rights groups, nor the largest organizations of the socialist left are sounding the alarms and calling for mass mobilization and resistance in principled defense of abortion rights.

Socialists believe every single woman and PWCBP must have the fundamental and inalienable right to terminate a pregnancy–at any point in the pregnancy–in order to have full and genuine bodily autonomy; and that we have to organize the fight to defend abortion rights in the streets across the country at this critical moment.

Winning Abortion Rights

Fortunately, we know how abortion rights were won in the 1960’s and and we can draw from this history to rebuild a mass movement today. Persistent mass mobilizations brought millions of people into activism and out onto the streets and often into overlapping struggles against the US government’s war in Vietnam war; to support the fight for Civil Rights and Black, Brown, and Indigenous Power; and for women’s and LGBTQ+ liberation. The abortion rights movement reached a high point of militancy in the early 1970s, when the rightwing Supreme Court was begrudgingly cajoled into recognizing abortion on demand to placate radicalizing movements.

Women and men demonstrated in the streets, on college campuses, and at government offices and institutions. Women and PWCBP across the country participated in speakouts and demonstrations where they shared their stories of struggles for abortions or being forced to carrying pregnancies to term and having babies taken and adopted without their consent. They fought for abortion on demand, contraception, free child care, equal pay for equal work, welfare, access to universities, paid house work, and many more demands. Abortion was fundamental to women’s sense of liberation, as unwanted pregnancies change everything about the trajectory of one’s life. In order for people to be completely equal, those who can become pregnant must have the total right to terminate those pregnancies if they so choose.

The Supreme Court decision upholding Roe versus Wade was authored by Harry Blackmun, a highly conservative Supreme Court Justice appointed by the ultra-conservative president Richard Millhouse Nixon. Blackmun wrote the decision and was supported by other rightwing justices in 1973 after a long and complex fight by women and PWCBP.

Before abortion was legal, people ended unwanted pregnancies by drinking herbs, chemicals and poisonous concoctions; or through inserting objects directly into their vaginas and cervixes. Illegal “back-alley” abortion became a common practice, but had life-threatening and deadly consequences for many women as a result of unsanitary or non-professional procedures. Many died from sepsis, internal hemorrhaging, and other causes; while others have been left infertile or suffering from other long-term maladies.

Abortion in the US was made illegal in 1880 at the behest of the American Medical Association (AMA), which opposed the dangerous abortion remedies being advertised and sold at the time. They also opposed women entering medical schools, working in the medical profession, and succeeded in usurping the role of midwifery (a medical profession significantly composed of African American Women) for financial gain. Additionally, by 1889, the Catholic Church condemned all abortions.

With the advent of the birth control pill in 1950, millions of women who had access were able to exercise more control over their own lives, go to college, enter the labor force, and pursue careers. Nevertheless, the pill wasn’t available to everyone, and unwanted pregnancies continued unabated. With advances resulting from access to education and employment–and a sense of control over their own bodies–many women and PWCBP joined the emerging fight for free abortion on demand.

From 1968 to 1973 there were mass mobilizations for radical social change. The demands included: ending the US war in Vietnam, equal pay and equal rights. The right to abortion on demand became the centerpiece of the feminist movement. The tenacity and militancy of these movements became a factor in determining Supreme Court outcomes, as there had been tangible concerns that the court could lose legitimacy in the eyes of the population if it acted with blatant disregard for the “the word in the street.” By 1973, a rightwing administration and Supreme Court was pressed to carry out a period of significant and far-reaching reform (in tandem with unleashing state violence and repression) to stifle the radicalizing trajectory of the time.

The scale and militancy of the movements of the 1960s and 1970s compelled the US government to carry out sweeping reforms, dismantling the most vile underpinnings of racial segregation (including the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which was largely overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013), the full withdrawal from Vietnam, and the nationwide legalization of abortion through Roe v. Wade.

Shifting to defense

Despite the monumental concessions of the period there was no cohesive mass socialist organization in the US capable of uniting militants and leading the movements beyond reform, and towards more revolutionary aims that could overthrow the foundations of women's oppression rooted in the patriarchal and exploitative class structures of capitalism. As a result, the reforms of the period, such as abortion on demand, have proven to be revocable or diminishable over time. Instead, most of the militants from the era eventually exited from the radical left and went in different directions. Most of the active leadership was drawn into the Democratic Party or into academia; others adapted to emerging lifestyle politics, or otherwise reoriented their focus on service attempting to affect further change on an individual basis versus collective class struggle. Nevertheless, mass protest movements have been periodically organized to keep abortion rights in place amid growing attacks from within the religious Right, the Republican Party, and an array of far-right and fascist movements.

The phenomenon of mass protest beating back the rightwing attack on reproductive rights was repeated in 1989 and 1992, during another round of Supreme Court challenges to Roe v. Wade. A mass movement had been built over those years that took the fight to the Supreme Court itself. As the New York Times reported in 1992 on the largest mass protest in the country at the time:

At least half a million people marched from the White House to the Mall near the Capitol today in support of abortion rights, hoping to impress lawmakers and the public with their political influence…The crowd, perhaps the largest ever to march on Washington, was estimated by the police at 500,000 and by the organizers at 700,000. By either count, it was around twice the size of the huge abortion-rights demonstration that filled the grassy Mall three years ago this week.

The marchers came from all over the nation, by plane and bus and train and car. They included mothers and daughters, Hollywood stars, teachers, preachers and doctors, Republicans for Choice, Catholics for Choice and two Presidential candidates, Bill Clinton and Edmund G. Brown Jr.

The SCOTUS ultimately upheld Roe, and with it enshrining the sentiment of the movement that abortion was a private and personal health matter to be solely decided by women. Not only did the court preserve Roe v. Wade, but it also shifted national politics. Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who were elected to office that same year, publicly changed their previous oppositional positions on the issue–and now embraced abortion rights. Not only did the incoming Clinton Administration pledge to defend abortion rights, but also included a campaign promise to remove all federal and state restrictions on abortion access (while eventually falling short of fulfilling this pledge once in office).

The Democratic Party abdicates

No sooner had abortion become constitutionally protected, than the Right began its offensive to roll back the gains. In this effort, they were significantly aided by rightward political turns in the Democratic Party. The first and most damaging legislation became known as the Hyde Amendment, which ended federal funding for abortion for poor women and PWCBP. Henry Hyde was a conservative Republican Senator from Illinois who introduced the legislation in 1975, and the Democratic president Jimmy Carter signed it into law. When asked if he thought this legislation was unfair to poor and working class women, he responded smugly that “life is unfair”. The “right to life” movement, as they now called themselves, then began its incessant war of attrition to chip away and undermine abortion access at the state level using both a legal strategy and one of physical violence and disruption.

For its part, the politicians of the Democratic Party and those who previously posed as the unrelenting defenders of abortion, retreated from active defense. Organizations like the National Organization of Women (NOW), the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), Planned Parenthood (PP) and other non-governmental campaigning groups took nominal leadership over the abortion-rights movement and steered it towards an electoral focus; with the strategy of preserving abortion rights focusing solely on getting Democratic politicians into office. By the early 1990’s, the Democratic Party leadership began to shift rightward in line with the ruling class as a whole, which launched an offensive (reflected in the twelve-year tenure of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) to dismantle the welfare state and impose austerity as part of the neoliberal restructuring of capitalism. This shift produced the so-called “New Democrats”, a restructured leadership of the party led by Bill Clinton. This reorganized Democratic Party was enthusiastically committed to administering the neoliberalization of capitalism and austerity. They shed the “liberal” identity of the party in favor of appealing to centrists and staking out “common ground” with rightwing voters by toning down and eventually abdicating its active and open defense of abortion. This transition cleared the lane for the Right, and gave encouragement for more aggressive action.

The abortion rights NGOs became ever more entrenched in supporting Democratic Party elections, effectively converting themselves into campaigning and lobbying auxiliaries. As the Democrats shifted to the right, so too did these groups shift, clinging to the idea that Democrats were the only hope for defending abortion from the now emboldened and openly anti-abortion movements operating alongside and through the Republican Party. The Democratic Party refused to actively fight to overturn the Hyde Amendment and subsequently downplayed each additional attack. The Democratic Party refused to stand up against parental consent laws, forced waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, and a myriad of additional restrictions.

The Democratic Party refused to actively fight to overturn the Hyde Amendment and subsequently downplayed each additional attack. The Democratic Party refused to stand up against parental consent laws, forced waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, and a myriad of additional restrictions.

Under these conditions, the anti-abortion movement has been massively successful at reducing access to safe legal abortions and to making abortions extremely expensive and difficult to access. Teenagers, Black people, Migrants, Indigenous Peoples, all POC, rural, southern and poor women/PWMBC across the country have suffered the most. Middle class and wealthy urban and suburban pregnant people have always had and continue to have easier access to safe abortions. Furthermore, the rightwing anti-abortion movement continued to expand and turn towards violence and terrorism to force the issue.

Mobilizations of the far-right

As this move to the right in society was unchecked, it eventually gave confidence to terrorist groups that began attacking abortion providers. The National Abortion Federation has been tracking violence against abortion providers and clinics since 1977. The violent and extremist nature of the anti-abortion movement has been well documented since Roe V. Wade, with incessant cycles of high-profile terrorist attacks, premediated murders, bombings, and arsons.

In 1986, the rabid anti-abortionist Randall Terry organized a group called Operation Rescue (OR). Terry implored his adherents to declare war on abortion providers and their facilities with no quarter, rallying extremist action with the slogan “If you believe abortion is murder, act like it's murder.” OR groups became implicated in firebombing, attacking and destroying clinics; and verbally and physically attacking doctors, nurses, secretaries and women and PWCBP working in or using the clinics facilities.

Operation Rescue’s most effective way to stop abortions was to mobilize religious zealots to blockade clinic entrances and threaten and intimidate those seeking services, succeeding in some cases in completely barricading facilities. Police, often sympathetic or OR supporters themselves, refused to support those trying to enter clinics. As OR increased their aggressive tactics authorities were eventually put in the position of making arrests. However, on a day-to-day basis, Operation Rescue was able to turn patients away through unhindered harassment and intimidation. They held “vigils for life” with giant doctored signs of fetuses, while screaming, chanting, shoving and verbally intimidating women and PWCBP at clinics and hospitals across the nation. In the end, thousands of people were obstructed from receiving abortions.

The success of Operation Rescue in instilling fear and blocking abortion access led the group to attract a larger and more varied assortment of far-right bigots. Amid the momentum and awash in a sense of self-power, Terry Randall issued a declaration and call for violence against what he characterized as anti-Christian and anti-American vices in US society: “I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good … Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty; we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.” The group then expanded its objectives and strategy to attack LGBTQ+ people.

The group's assaults and disruptions resulted in over 40,000 arrests between 1988 and 1991 alone, showing the scale of the movement and its capacity to mobilize across the country. By the turn of the 21st century, the far-right anti-abortion movement regrouped and reorganized in conjunction with the continual shift to the political right happening at the top of society. In 2008, then President Obama created the “Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships”, which opened the door for religious groups to advise the administration, and have a role in determining social policy, and included anti-abortion figureheads that used the position to decry abortion. For instance, one office-holder wrote in a religious site:

The launch of the President's Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, on which I will serve, recommits our nation to the necessary and positive vision of partnership between the public sector and the faith community. It is significant that both the elimination of poverty and the reduction of abortion are central goals within the administration and this new initiative. This indicates a shift toward a deeper and more constructive engagement with the faith community and civil society around substantive policy issues.

Obama publicly supported calls to reduce abortion and made it a campaign pledge during his first term. By 2016, then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ran her losing campaign making the same overtures to the right, pledging to gear policy towards the reduction of abortions and signaling a willingness to concede even more terrain to the anti-abortion forces.

In tandem with declining access, political abandonment by the Democratic Party, and the reorganization and growth of far-right forces, so too have incidents of violence against abortion providers and recipients increased on an upward arc every year since 2010. A surge in the number of violent attacks coincided with the Trump presidency, showing convergences between the historical wings of the anti-abortion movement with a new generation of avowed white nationalists, violent misogynists and incels, and other categories of fascists. In 2017, for instance, the National Abortion Federation recorded 1,081 violent and terrorist acts against abortion providers or recipients, 1,369 acts in 2018, 1,724 in 2019, and 1,627 in 2020. Between 2019 and 2020, there was an 125% increase in incidents of assault and battery outside abortion clinics, totaling 54 documented cases in one year.

More recently the Catholic Church has launched a seemingly more “moderate” organization called Forty Days For Life, which became necessary as the extremism and violence of Operation Rescue made it unpalatable to more mainstream Catholics. As the Church’s intention is to mobilize its congregants into anti-abortion activism, they needed to engage in less outwardly aggressive tactics. They did this by assigning Catholics days and times to “pray for fetuses” at various abortion clinics across the US. They have chapters in churches and universities around the country. Their actions have already impacted thousands attempting to access abortions.

The class basis of the attack on reproductive rights

The coordinated and decades’ long assault on abortion has already made it extremely difficult for most women and PWCBP to access abortion–even when its legal. For instance, by 2010, 87% of the 3,006 counties nationwide have no abortion provider. If Roe is overturned, this will begin a domino effect that will increase the likelihood that even fewer people can get access, especially for the majority of working class and poor people.

The absence of an abortion rights movement has led some groups and individuals to refocus on “digging in” to keep abortion legal in Democratic Party-controlled states. Pro-choice advocates are asking that abortion pills be made readily available as an over-the-counter drug. They are also proposing fundraising operations to pay for the transportation of women and PWCBP across state lines to states where abortion providers still exist.

Women and PWCBP who cannot access abortion pills, afford to travel to states where abortion is still legal, or find someone doing abortions underground will be forced into carrying pregnancies to term; placing children up for adoption or forced to live in increasing poverty. They will be forced to drop out of high school, college, and the workforce. Attempting to end pregnancies will return women and PWCBP to drinking bleach and other poisonous chemical concoctions, inserting bleach-soaked tampons, coat hangers, knitting needles and other sharp objects into their uteruses and to rely on back-alley abortionists to terminate their pregnancies. Because of systemic racism, and the way all forms of oppression disproportionately impact people of Color, overturning Roe V. Wade will cause exponential harm to Black and Brown working class and economically displaced and disenfranchised people.

Because of systemic racism, and the way all forms of oppression disproportionately impact people of Color, overturning Roe V. Wade will cause exponential harm to Black and Brown working class and economically displaced and disenfranchised people.

Furthermore, many people will not have access to abortion pills, especially poor and working class, pre-teens and teens, people of color and migrants, those too far into a pregnancy for abortion pills to work (they’re only efficacious for 10 weeks), living in rural or remote locations, living with parents, partners or other guardians who refuse them access to the pills; and those who are simply too poor or lacking information or the cash to acquire the pills and other forms of illicit medical abortions will be left behind.

Non-governmental organizations, non-profits, and reformist organizations who support abortion rights, to the extent they are engaged in activity (most are relying on the Democratic Party and law suits), see the primary and immediate task of making abortion pills available over the counter by pressuring the FDA, fundraising to purchase pills for women/PWCBP in need, learning to provide underground abortions, or to set up a type of underground railroad to transport people to states where abortion is still legal. This reflects an implicit accommodation to the inevitability of Roe’s reversal, and rejects the urgency of organizing movements to fight back. Instead, this will further invigorate the confidence of the Right to further push women and PWCBP into a position of second-class citizenship.

Going back a century

If Roe versus Wade is overturned, so-called trigger laws will go into effect in 26 states that will immediately outlaw abortion. This will have severe repercussions for doctors, providers, and those seeking or receiving abortions. In Wisconsin, for example, providing abortions would immediately become felonious and require a minimum 6 year prison term for anyone providing abortions.

So-called “right to life'' campaigns and organizations, such as Forty Days for Life, reactionary Evangelical and other religious-based anti-abortion movements, white supremacist and fascist groups that have taken up the cause, and much of the far-right base of the Republican Party base will be encouraged to act and will grow exponentially as there rack up victories for their side. The recent partial abortion ban in Texas, Senate Bill 8, reflects this trajectory. This law allows individuals to sue abortion providers for $10,000 if they provide an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy–ushering in and encouraging a new form of legalized rightwing vigilantism.

In Mississippi the state government recently banned most abortions after 15 weeks, which is about two months earlier than what Roe and later decisions allow. This is the state law that is currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court today, and will be likely pushed for those states where abortion remains legal. This type of law, along with efforts to ban the abortion pill, are already being moved into place as the opening salvo in a push for complete illegalization nationwide if and when Roe is overturned.

Aside from a small population of middle-class and bourgeois people who can retain access amid the decline, the rights of most women and LGBTQAI people will be set back to the last century. The outcome will mean most women and PWCBP will lose the opportunity to start–or not start–a family as they see fit. People will have to live with more trauma and lead less healthy lives. Divorce will become much more difficult. People will have fewer opportunities to leave abusive spouses, partners, or parents. Since women and PWCBP are disproportionately made responsible for the lion's share of caring for babies, children, seniors and the sick; so the exploitation of their labor will increase.

Building the fightback in the streets

Recent polling shows there is broad support for Roe, despite the anti-abortion shifts in ruling class politics. For instance, 69% of respondents want the Supreme Court to keep Roe Vs. Wade in place and a majority of the public favors keeping abortion being legal in most or all cases. Furthermore, 61% of U.S. women consider themselves feminists, adhering to the principles that were developed through past episodes of struggle. Nevertheless, popular opinion is not enough to stop the right. For that, it will be necessary to rebuild a militant movement to defend Roe Vs. Wade and abortion clinics that will be subjected to renewed attacks in the months and years ahead.

In the early 1990s abortion rights activists, including organizations like the International Socialist Organization, Radical Women, Socialist Alternative, and others; were able to mobilize members of NOW and NARAL and Planned Parenthood and very importantly–thousands of completely new activists–to push back against Operation Rescue. The defense movement organized ever larger numbers at clinics to face off with their members. In many cases these efforts were able to keep clinics open. After years of struggle the abortion rights movement was able to demoralize OR’s membership, reduce their numbers and willingness to participate, and eventually push them out and away from most clinics. Currently there is no mass abortion rights movement that can counter the latest manifestations of the anti-abortion right, such as Forty Days for Life, who will only grow and become potentially more dangerous.

Unfortunately, the largest socialist organization in the US, the Democratic Socialists of America, have chosen not to mount a national campaign to defend what is left of a woman’s/PWCBP’s right to control their own bodies. NOW, NARAL and Planned parenthood are relying on lawsuits to keep at least some clinics open across the country. The DSA should have been trying to push the leaders of these groups to call for protest actions. In contrast, the far right held a mass demonstration to influence the SCOTUS to overturn Roe in Washington DC on January 21. If the mainstream NGOs are unwilling to lead, the DSA with tens of thousands of members across the country, must call for mass protest action.

Even if NOW, NARAL, PP, DSA and other organizations are unconvinced of the need to fight in the streets, it is likely that tens, or even hundreds of thousands of people across the country will support or join efforts to organize against the overturning of Roe. Socialists have a lot to learn from the new generations of people who can become pregnant and we have a lot to share as well about how we can unite and organize.

Now is the time to fight. As a socialist of 30 years, who had a second trimester abortion 25 years ago, I believe in proudly fighting for free abortion on demand, with no apologies and no regrets! Every person who supports bodily autonomy for all should figure out how to fight back. These are our bodies, our lives and it’s our right to decide.

Kim Gasper-Rabuck is a former middle school teacher and full-time parent. She has been an activist and organizer who has worked to stop wars, defend abortion, fight police brutality, support strikes, and fight for socialist ideas and organization for the last 35 years.