The Supreme Court is poised to overturn federal constitutional protections of abortion rights. A ruling on a case which would overturn Roe v. Wade is expected this month. The court usually releases announcements and decisions on Mondays and Wednesdays.
We call on all progressive people to make serious preparations now for mass protests in response to the ruling once it is announced.
The right to determine if and when one becomes pregnant, and to terminate that pregnancy, is a question of basic bodily autonomy. Women and other people with the ability to become pregnant cannot be free if this basic right is curtailed. Working class and poor women make up the majority of people getting abortions. They will bear the heaviest burden, facing a new reason for criminalization, lack of resources to travel for an abortion, and the risk of injury or death from back-alley abortions. Almost two thirds of abortions are obtained by African American, Chicano, and other oppressed nationality women. Removing the right to abortion would worsen national oppression in the United States.
Many of the so-called constitutional rights we take for granted today date only to the 1960’s, a time when the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s movement, the LGBTQ movement and many other important movements were at a very high level. The right to abortion access, like all the other rights working people in the U.S. have, was won through mass struggle. Only mass struggle will save it.
We must organize and mobilize thousands to take to the streets and show the ruling class that if they try to take our reproductive rights away, we will take them back, by any means necessary.
