ALERT!
September 1st:
Forced Motherhood and Fascist Vigilantism Become Law in Texas

by Sunsara Taylor

Updated September 1, 2021 | revcom.us

 

On September 1, a Texas law went into effect that has now made all abortions after approximately six weeks into pregnancy effectively illegal. There are approximately six million women of child-bearing age in Texas who are now deprived of the ability to safely, legally terminate a pregnancy. Thus far, the Supreme Court has refused to rule on an emergency appeal, so the law is in effect

Let’s call this for what it is: being forced to bear a child against your will is a form of slavery.

But that is not even the worst of it. The way this law is written empowers any fanatic or woman hater anywhere... any vengeful ex-boyfriend or stalker... any self-righteous American Taliban-style Christian fascist... or anyone else... to use the power of the state to sue anyone that even assists a woman in obtaining an abortion. Accusations and lawsuits will be hurled. Ugly media-frenzied shaming will pile injury and isolation onto the women and those who support them. Fascist mobs will gain momentum—strengthening their overall drive to lock in their white supremacist, male-supremacist, anti-immigrant, “Make America Great Again” nightmare.

This should be a stop-everything moment. The streets should be filled with furious outpourings refusing to see women slammed backwards and enslaved. Artists and public figures should be drawing a line. All of society should be mobilized to stop this fascist law and to look into the nature of the system that would allow women to be enslaved in this way. Growing numbers should be lifting their sights to and getting organized into the only real and tremendously liberating alternative to this system and its intensifying horrors: an actual revolution!

Instead, far too few know about this fascist law. And too many of those who do are not doing jack shit about it.

Why? In large part because the Democratic Party and the reproductive rights and women’s rights groups tied to it have been and still are relying on the “normal channels” of lawsuits and legislation, even as the courts and legislatures are increasingly packed with fascists hell-bent on twisting the law into an instrument of fascist atrocity or discarding it altogether. Instead of mobilizing the outrage of millions, these groups are accepting in advance that abortion will be criminalized in large parts of the country and working to protect access in a few places and help (some) women from anti-abortion states to travel.

Where is this leading? Right now in Texas, there are women who don’t yet know they are pregnant—17-year-olds with dreams of college and more, 30-somethings struggling to support four or five other kids, women living in cars or trapped with abusive partners. By the time they learn they are pregnant, it will be too late to get an abortion. They will be forced to have children against their will. Others will risk their lives—or risk imprisonment—to induce their own abortions. One way or another, their lives will change in a flash. And every day behind them, there will be more women... a pile-up of thousands and thousands of lives foreclosed. Desperation deepened. Abusive relations bolted more firmly into place. A message to all women everywhere: no matter what else you achieve, what else you aspire to, you are little more than an incubator. Revenge and punishment will be mobilized against anyone who dares to defy. And sooner or later (very likely sooner), this fascist shut-down of all access to abortion will spread across the country and increasingly around the world.

But this is NOT the only future that is possible. The coming apart of the norms that have held for so long in this country—including the fundamental right to abortion with all this means for women’s lives—provides not only the potential for a radically reactionary, fascist resolution. It also opens up the possibility of something that has been long needed, but which is rarely possible in a powerful country like this: the chance to ripen and win an actual revolution that can move humanity beyond a world in which billions lead lives of grinding exploitation to enrich others, male supremacy and white supremacy are dominant, the environment is destroyed, ignorance is enforced and one country (the U.S.) terrorizes and tries to run the world while it contends and battles for supremacy with other powers and enforces a worldwide system of super-exploitation and oppression.

A key part of wrenching a positive future out of these extraordinarily dangerous times is to break loose of the constraints of the Democratic Party (and the “women’s groups” that are tied to them) and mobilize the righteous fury of women and others against this enslavement. As Bob Avakian, the architect of the new communism, put it in his piece, “THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY”:

Instead of being a tail on the Democratic donkey—with its attempt to keep this monstrous system going, and to deal with the growing fascist danger, by relying on the “normal procedures” of this system and doomed efforts to “heal the divisions” that are deepening every day—people need to work for the revolution that is urgently needed, and deal with the fascist danger as part of doing that.

Now is the time to fill the streets with outrage! Now is the time to get organized for a real revolution!

FETUSES ARE NOT BABIES! ABORTION IS NOT MURDER! WOMEN ARE NOT INCUBATORS!

FORCED MOTHERHOOD IS FEMALE ENSLAVEMENT!

ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY!

BREAK THE CHAINS! UNLEASH THE FURY OF WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION!

From The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, Episode 67:

Sunsara Taylor interviews Toni Redtree, a writer for revcom.us, on the abortion rights emergency