Why Are They Making War on Women?

When the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was being confirmed by the Senate in 1993, she was asked about her views on Roe v. Wade. She responded by saying, “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”

The Supreme Court is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade soon, which will have the effect, among other things, of outlawing abortion completely (even in cases of rape or incest) in many states. With her words in 1993, Ginsburg summed up one monumental thing that is at stake today – whether women are fully adult human beings with human rights. Women can’t be equal if they don’t have reproductive freedom.

The other monumental thing at stake is democracy itself, which goes hand in hand with human rights. The assault on women’s rights is part and parcel of the wholesale assault on democracy that has been under way for years and has reached a crescendo in the last two years with the attack on the right to vote. (Through 2022, there are more than 550 bills introduced to restrict voting access across at least 40 states, and 19 states enacted 33 laws restricting voting access last year.)

Last September, Ja’han Jones published an editorial on MSNBC’s The Reid Out Blog under the headline “American fascism is on the rise as anti-abortion and voter suppression bills thrive.” In the piece, Jones noted that, “In 2021, a historic spate of regressive voter suppression and anti-abortion legislation has made the reality of American fascism all the more clear: It’s on the rise. . . .The concurrence of these efforts — to drastically curb voting and restrict access to abortion — is not a coincidence. These bills are hardening fascism in America, using a combination of nationalism, religion and potential violence to disempower marginalized Americans.”

Overturning Roe is all the more significant because the original Roe decision was based on the constitutional right to privacy, and a number of other rights granted through court decisions and laws in past years rest on the right to privacy. If the right to privacy is called into question, other rights based on it may be on the chopping block. These include the right to marry someone of the same gender, the right to contraception, and the right to interracial marriage. The leaked opinion overturning Roe also implicitly calls into question other “purported rights that aren’t firmly established in American traditions,” as Politico reported.

America’s corporations are behind the drive to put an end to democracy, for both economic and ideological reasons. To guarantee their profits, they have to privatize things that were once public and eliminate all laws and regulations that might limit their ability to make money. This means they have to eliminate democracy to prevent us from fighting for our economic, civil and human rights. The Popular Information newsletter on May 4 published a list of 13 corporations it says have been major financial contributors to promoting anti-abortion laws in the states and to putting a Supreme Court in place that would overturn Roe v. Wade. The list includes such corporate giants as Google, Coca Cola, Amazon, AT&T, Citi, CVS and Walmart.

Just as the assault on the right of people of color, and especially Black Americans, to vote has been used to threaten everyone’s rights, this corporate-led war on women has been used to mount another threat to democracy. Are women full human beings with equal rights, or not? Will we live in a democracy controlled by the people, or a dictatorship of the corporations? Will we have the power to transform our society into one that serves the mass of the people? These are the questions before us.

Millions of people are rightly furious at the Republicans. They are also furious at the corporate-backed members of the Democratic Party over their inability or unwillingness to represent the true interests of the people. As one young man told Umair Haque, “It’s the total failure of leadership! The fact that they [Democrats] can’t get anything passed or done. They have accomplished nothing major. No student debt relief. No stimulus checks. They keep increasing military spending . . . . They’ve continued f*cking up Covid. They’re just completely absent.” And a young woman told Haque, “There is a feeling from women that the Dems have had 50 years to codify Roe into law, but have not because they wanted it to remain a bargaining chip. Something they could hang over women’s heads, and say, ‘you better vote for us, or they’ll get rid of it!’ Now that they’ve gotten rid of it, the Dems aren’t even fighting . . ., they’re just handwringing, making excuses for it, and… asking for money. It’s incredible. Seventy percent of Americans are against this. And the Dems are doing nothing.”

The impending Supreme Court decision can and must be fixed in Congress. At this moment, the pressure must be put on Biden and the top Congressional Democrats to defend women and defend democracy by codifying Roe into law now. The bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022, would make abortion legal nationally, superseding anti-abortion legislation passed by states. The Senate is set to vote on the bill May 11. Passing it would require ending the filibuster in the Senate. Biden and the corporate Democrats failed us on voting rights legislation; they cannot be allowed to squander this opportunity to act.

Candidates for Congress in this year’s election must also be pressured to say what they will do to defend the rights of women and defend democracy.

Women, men and youth are already in the streets across the country, expressing the people’s demands in marches, strikes, demonstrations, occupations and electoral campaigns. The pressure to force the government to act in our interests must be massive and relentless. Our goal is a democracy that serves the people, not the corporations, and where everyone has rights. Nothing less is acceptable.

What is Fascism?

The fascism (dictatorship) developing in America today is corporations taking over our government. We are more and more being governed directly by corporate representatives who are making decisions that benefit the corporations, not the people.

In 2003, Dr. Lawrence Britt wrote an article in which he identified 14 things that fascist societies have in common. See the list here.