Abortion ban an attack on women

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

May 11, 2007

THE RECENT Supreme Court decision to uphold a ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions is disgusting and a major setback for the feminist movement and for women in general. It shifts even more of the burden of reproducing the labor force onto the shoulders of working-class women and families.

Abortion bans disproportionately affect poor and working-class women; the rich will always be able to find doctors willing to provide safe abortions for a premium.

Considering the slashing of the social safety net over the past quarter century, the further erosion of abortion rights (even now, only 13 percent of U.S. counties offer abortion services) will mean more women will have to choose between attempting to raise a child in abject poverty, and risking serious bodily harm (sterility, among other things) and death by seeking a dangerous "back-alley" abortion.

There is an inverse relationship between access to abortion and unnecessary deaths of women: a mass grassroots movement is necessary to prevent a return to the pre-Roe v. Wade days when tens of thousands of women bled to death across the United States.

The successful struggle for a ballot measure that overturned an abortion ban in the 2006 election in South Dakota proves that grassroots organizing, which won abortion rights in the first place, is still effective in securing a woman's right to choose.

In Mexico, in March, 3,000 demonstrators marched in Mexico City, demanding that the Mexican government legalize abortion. Patricia Mercado, a Mexican feminist and former presidential candidate, stated: "There are women who die today...there are four women every day [who die] because of bad abortions, especially poor women, and the state must respond to the problems of justice and public health that are brought on by clandestine abortions."

Unlike leading Democrats--who tail conservatives who portray abortions as immoral, calling for abortions to be "safe and rare"--Mercado took a firm stance: "A woman can decide to have an abortion or not have it, but it's her decision."

The hypocrisy of a government that claims to support "life" while it slaughters hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan and allows 46.6 million people to go without health insurance in the richest country in the world is staggering.

Pro-choice activists in the United States should follow the example set by Mercado, as well as the women and men who won abortion rights in the U.S. in 1973 after years of struggle. We must accept nothing less than free abortion on demand!

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.

Till and the legacy of racism

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

April 6, 2007

SHARON SMITH'S piece, "Justice denied again for Emmett Till," provides a launching pad from which we can talk about the persistence of brutal racism in the U.S. (March 9).

The recent coverage on the racist criminal injustice system, including continued coverage of the Gary Tyler case, underlines this point--but the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina are a unique microcosm of the poverty and racism that have continued to exist since the murder of Emmett Till.

A friend recently referred me to a comparison that Michael Eric Dyson made in his book Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster: In Pompeii, when Mount Vesuvius erupted and the city was destroyed, large numbers of slaves and poor servants were smothered by ash because they could not afford the horses and chariots necessary to escape.

Similarly, a predominately Black group of poor New Orleans residents were unable to evacuate because they too lacked money for transportation.

Dyson notes that many of the poor and enslaved residents of Pompeii who were left to die in the city (after the rich evacuated) spent their last few hours of life collecting riches that were left behind. Many bodies that were excavated from the site were found clutching jewelry and other symbols of wealth, seeking to experience what it was like to have some amount of luxury if even for a short while.

Dyson points out that the "crime" of "stealing" these trinkets pales in comparison to the crime that was the life of the slave/servant in Pompeii before the eruption of Vesuvius.

The analogy to Katrina and the "looting" is fitting, and the media's coverage of the hurricane, which spent vastly more time demonizing the poor Black victims of the hurricane than it did exploring the conditions of poverty and racism that so exacerbated the disaster, provides further evidence that systemic racism in the U.S. was not abolished by the civil rights movement that Emmett Till's brutal murder helped spark.

The tragedies of Pompeii and Katrina, nearly 2,000 years apart, show how class society neglects to offer the most exploited and oppressed even the means to escape an avoidable death. Today, however, a better world is possible.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.

Confronting Zionism at UMass

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

November 17, 2006

ON NOVEMBER 1, the Student Alliance for Israel invited Yaakov Katz, the defense correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, to speak on the University of Massachusetts-Amherst campus. Katz spoke mainly about his experiences while embedded with the Israel Defense Force (IDF) during the recent Israeli bombardment of Lebanon.

His speech consisted of a pro-Zionist argument of the need for Israel to take a hard line against Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, peppered with anecdotes that revealed his lack of concern for the Lebanese and Palestinians killed, injured or rendered homeless by IDF forces. For example, he expressed sympathy for an IDF soldier who was unable to speak to his wife on his cell phone due to the noise coming from the artillery cannons that were shelling civilians in Lebanon, while making no mention of the fate of those on the other side of the shells.

Members of the International Socialist Organization from the Northampton branch plus individuals from the Muslim and Lebanese Students Associations attended the talk.

We corrected Katz at several points during his talk (when he referred to Hamas as "terrorists," for example), and stumped him during the question-answer period when one person asked why it is unacceptable for Iran to fund Hezbollah while the United States funds Israel to the tune of billions of dollars per year.

Another person strongly condemned Israel's barbaric destruction of Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and brutal oppression of the Palestinian people before challenging the Zionists to a debate, an offer that was not accepted.

Hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims such as the case of Alia Ansari, the Muslim woman in Fremont, Calif., who was shot in the head while holding her daughter's hand, are tragic reminders of the importance of confronting bigots like Katz and other Zionist cheerleaders wherever they appear.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.