By the League Basic Needs Electoral Committee
A series of decisions by rogue courts and legislatures has forced reproductive freedom to the center of the 2024 elections, right there with migrant rights, genocide in Palestine, the planet, the economy, and the future of democracy. These decisions reveal a calculated campaign to attack the working class by denying the rights and the very humanity of women and pregnant people, including their right to receive health care and to vote for a better world for themselves and their children. The attack on reproductive rights is not a separate women’s issue. It is central to the overall fascist vision for America: a society characterized by unnecessary suffering, political obedience, and religious fatalism. It is a vision we can, must, and will defeat.
Reproductive freedom is one of the many human rights slated to be eliminated by Project 2025, the 920-page blueprint that corporations plan to impose if they get a “conservative president” elected in November. Their plan is to replace our limited democracy with open fascist dictatorship – unlimited corporate power to drive the working class into destitution. To fight this tyranny, we have to understand that its logic is to use white supremacy and patriarchy to divide, conquer, and control. This strategy depends on total government regulation of reproduction. It would allow government to combat the “great replacement” by imposing forced pregnancy on white women and deportation and sterilization on women of color.
The leadership of women fighting for reproductive freedom will be instrumental to defeating Project 2025. But reproductive freedom is more than just another issue or a tactic in the battle against dictatorship. It is inseparable from our economic well-being, our democracy, our resistance to genocide, and our spiritual liberation. Especially now, as the movement led by youth mobilizes to fight and stop the bombing and destruction of Gaza, we have the opportunity to reach new leaders and new forces everywhere.
THE DANGER
In March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case seeking to ban the abortion pill mifepristone. Two justices appeared to claim that the 1873 Comstock Act already outlaws not only mifepristone but any abortion anywhere in the United States – a claim also advocated by Project 2025. Project 2025 would not only outlaw mifepristone, but would direct Justice Department prosecution of any and all abortion providers anywhere based on the Comstock Act.
On April 1, the Florida Supreme Court voted 6-1 to uphold a six-week abortion ban. The six anti-abortion justices appeared to endorse a “fetal personhood” interpretation of the Florida constitution that would deny its legislature the right to legalize abortion. Three of them even held that the people themselves have no right to vote to legalize abortion, because it would violate the judges’ religious beliefs. However, four of them did vote to allow an abortion legalization amendment to go on the November ballot. Although it will require a 60% vote to win, polling indicates that 61% of voters support it.
Legislators in over a dozen states are working to enact “fetal personhood” laws with the aim of criminalizing anyone participating in abortions or endangering embryos or fetuses in any way. The Alabama Supreme Court even ruled that frozen embryos used for in vitro fertilization (IVF) were “persons,” preventing people from accessing IVF to be able to have children. Although the legislature later voted to exempt IVF providers, confusion around the law continues to threaten and deter people seeking IVF procedures.
On April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court resurrected an 1864 anti-abortion law passed by a society where women were barred from voting and even chattel slavery was still not abolished. That law was since repealed by the legislature by a very narrow margin, but Arizona voters are still rallying to put a measure legalizing abortion on the November ballot, and this one would only require 50% of voters to pass.
IMPACT ON HEALTH CARE
Finally, later in April, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments that states should have the right to disregard parts of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA ). The act requires doctors to provide stabilizing care in emergencies, including abortion care. The state of Idaho argued that doctors should be forced to deny abortion care except “to prevent the death of a pregnant woman.” Allowing abortion care that would only prevent organ damage, disability, or serious bodily harm would be outlawed. Refusing to stabilize a patient until he or she is on the brink of death is a lethal gamble. For example, in ectopic pregnancies doctors would be required to risk rupturing a woman’s fallopian tubes before being permitted to remove a displaced embryo. The result would be not only unnecessary pain and suffering, but very likely prevent people from being able to have children ever again.
The criminalization of reproductive health care providers is driving more and more medical professionals out of the field altogether, undermining already limited access to clinics, hospitals, and every kind of health care, especially for African American mothers, especially in the South. Even providers in states where abortion remains legal are exhausted, overextended and hanging on by their fingernails.
SHIFTING POWER
Now is time to build a mass movement to stop Project 2025 and whoever seeks to exploit or control us. The success of the 2022 Vote No Kansas campaign, the first of the great state ballot victories for abortion access, validates the organizational approach to shifting power that it was based on.
“The organizational approach to shifting power means identifying the people at work, at worship, at school, or at the community garden that others seek out for help, advice, or information,” explained Melinda Lavon of Vote No Kansas. “Unfortunately, while a few direct actions or advocacy through nonprofits can be uplifting, they are not enough to stop the waves of attacks on our rights The courts are now in the clutches of the Federalist Society, and Democratic Party politicians cannot be relied upon to defeat Project 2025. We have to look at our connections in our communities, and seek out the spaces with both structure and natural leaders. These are the people with the actual power to lead us to defeating Project 2025.”
Abortion ballot issues over the last two years were won by coordinating activity between the legal teams fighting in the courts, the nonprofits like Planned Parenthood (each with their own complicated history and relationships), and the millions of people taking action in the streets since the fall of Roe. These millions have demonstrated that they have an electoral mindset to defeat fascist threats to reproductive care and this year’s election is no different. They have organized to put abortion access measures on the November ballot in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Maryland, Nevada and Colorado.
The organizational approach requires structured conversations with people we bring into the battle. They always remember how we make them feel, and it usually feels good to be heard. Knowing the issues dearest to our community leaders is how we motivate them to take action and be open to new information.
“My strategy is to do everything I can to help people understand the atrocities that are happening, how they are happening, and who is responsible,” said one clinic director. “I’ve been sending out key information, sitting down together at the clinic and in the streets, making the connections. The attack on reproductive rights is being waged by the same ruling class that is bombing and starving families in Palestine.”
It is important to be blunt about how much we would suffer under Project 2025, but also how we can stop it if we all act together. Warn people about misinformation or dangerous ideas like voting doesn’t matter, or not voting until we have a different political system. Make direct asks of people to not only commit to vote against any politician supporting Project 2025, but also to organize similar conversations with all the natural leaders in their community.
Victory will require more than mobilizing the already convinced and converted. A mass movement highly involved in community actions, public advocacy, legal work and voting rights protections will be able to not only defeat the fascist candidates, but to shift more power and self-determination to the working class.
Reproductive freedom cannot be won if it is understood as only a women’s issue or only part of the campaign to dismantle patriarchy. It has to be fought for as part of a working-class campaign to dismantle not only patriarchy, but also racism, war, environmental destruction and the economic exploitation that undergirds all of them. Reproductive freedom is at the heart of the peaceful and sustainable world we envision and fight for. In the words of Collective Power for Reproductive Justice: “We are dreaming ourselves into the future, fighting like revolutionaries. Our vision is a future rooted in human dignity and worth, bodily autonomy, joy, love and rest. Reproductive justice is our framework, intersectionality is our lens and liberation is the goal.”
Published on May 23, 2024
This article originated in Rally!
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