Selling out women's rights for a bill that lets the sickness industrial complex keep its profits and stay in charge.

LMV has never supported either the Republicans or the Democrats. Both are capitalist parties which implement capitalist anti working class solutions. They always have and they always will. We maintained this position when Obama got the nomination. We saw him as another slick bourgeois politician who would do the bidding of the corporations. We were right. He has bailed out Wall Street and the banks, he has continued the wars and occupations abroad, from the point of view of the big bourgeois as a whole they are quite happy.

It is hard to decide which of Obama's policies are most nauseating. But way up there has to be his sell out of women's rights to get the so called health bill passed. This bill leaves the profit addicted corporations still in charge and their profits protected, in fact boosted by more subsidies from the tax payers and it leaves millions still with no health coverage. Obama's regime has made all these dirty compromises so it can pretend it has got a health bill passed. Remember in the primaries he would not commit himself to universal coverage in his debates with Hilary Clinton. We can see now why not. Even back then he had decided to sell out millions of people.

Two pro choice writers contributed an article to the New York Times today. They are Kate Michelman of Naral pro choice America and Frances Kissling the former president of Catholics for Choice. The headline of the article is "Trading women's rights for political power." This is what we have been saying. This Democratic party regime has given away women's rights to try and get enough votes to pass it's so called health bill and claim political victory. It is hard to think of anything more disgusting. As these two writers say this bill "risks the well being of millions of women for generations to come." They go on in relation to the Democrats: "these so-called friends of women's rights have arguably done more to undermine reproductive rights than some of abortion's staunchest foes."

This article explains how these writers' organizations argued with the Democrats that it was a mistake to recruit right wing anti choice candidates to run in seats against right wing Republicans. They said that this would come back to haunt the Democrats. This is what has happened.

There was an alternative to this sell out. There are up to 13 million members in the unions. There are thousands of organizations which fight for women's rights. The majority of women in the country believe in women's right to choose. The union movement could have taken the lead. They could have unified these forces and built a movement that would have forced the capitalist politicians to retreat. Every city and town and suburb could had a women's rights campaigning centre based around the local trade unions and workplaces and community groups.

After all the Catholic Church mobilized its forces. They ordered all their full time workers, Cardinals, Bishops and Priests to preach in the churches against the so called health bill unless any funding for abortion was removed and now it is threatening to excommunicate Congressman Patrick J Kennedy son of Edward Kennedy unless he toes their line. These "incomplete men" and their organization are not afraid to fight. But the union leaders cower in the dark and refuse to fight for an issue which affects directly the 50% of the workforce who are women and all of the workforce in one way or another. These leaders are not living up to their responsibility. This is putting it mildly. The truth is they are selling out their members.

But a great united movement can still be built, we must take the issue up in our trade unions and our women's and community organizations. We can move to set up "Hands off our Bodies Committees," drawing delegates and members from all these organizations. A fighting movement can be built. These committees can be joined together to build a broader movement to win the right to choose in a full way, that is the right to have an abortion and the right to have the economic and health care means to have a child, whichever the mother chooses.

Such a movement could transform this country. It could lay the basis for building the trade unions into mass active organizations with a majority of the workforce and it could lay the basis for the building of a new political party, a Working Peoples' Party, which could represent the rights of women and the rights of all working people.

Sean.