War waged against working class women as politicians go after abortion rights and family planning

Over the past few years we've seen trillions of taxpayer dollars handed to the banks and other industries in order to keep them afloat, some $4.7 trillion in all.  And as they take these hand outs, the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2010 total compensation and benefits at publicly traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record of $135 billion, up 5.7% from the $128 billion the same companies paid out in 2009. Massive profits are being made and individuals amass huge fortunes, billions of dollars, speculating on currencies and other worthless activity.

The near fatal collapse of their system caused a crisis of confidence on the one hand but has also enabled the US capitalist class to intensify its offensive against workers and the poor at home. Using the "difficult economic times" as an excuse, Republicans and Democrats, the two political parties of the US capitalist class that have a monopoly on political life here, are driving US workers and the middle class back to the conditions that existed prior to the great strike waves of the 1930's and the civil rights movement that followed.

We can only imagine the violence that US capitalism inflicts on people around the world; nations and communities that have the misfortune to be geographically situated in its economic sphere of influence or having riches and natural resources like oil beneath their feet.  We can get some understanding of the level of this violence when we think more deeply about what these same forces, the US capitalist class, is doing to us at home in these so-called difficult times.

Millions of Americans are losing their homes and jobs, the health care and a right to education and decent social services as part of this assault on our living standards. As always, it is the weakest among us that suffers the most; the aged, the poor, the disabled, those without organization.

The Wall Street politicians are really going after women's rights and particularly the rights of working class and poor women which means women of color will be particularly affected.  Since November, Republicans have introduced 570 bills in state legislatures that restrict access to abortion in one way or another. Along with this they are "..cutting services that provide gynecological care, sex eduction, and contraception to primarily poor women." writes Business Week.

One study by the Guttmacher Institute notes that Family Planning Centers are the primary source of health care for 60% of the women that use them yet a proposal to eliminate all funding for them received considerable support until it was eventually defeated in the Senate in April.   Guttmacher research finds that "two-thirds of births resulting from unintended pregnancies–more than one million births each year–are publicly funded. The cost of those births, and the potential gross saving from helping women to avert them, is estimated at $11.1 billion"   But money is not the driving force behind the war these men are waging on abortion rights; it is the influence of religion in the state.



Despite being defeated at the federal level, at the state level, the war on working class women continues.  Indiana's governor, Mitch Daniels signed a bill this month that eliminated all state funding to organizations that provide family planning and abortions.   "The law also places some of the heaviest restrictions on access to abortion of any state." BW adds.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker's proposed budget would cut some $3.8 million form family planning services and in Minnesota there are efforts under way to eliminate all funding.  In Texas, the House of Representatives passed a budget that cut $61 million from family planning.

These initial figures are paltry in the first place, especially in a country that has the worst health care system in the advanced capitalist world.  And as far as abortions go, having an abortion is not an easy decision for a woman or a family to make and underlying most decisions are economics.  So these politicians, overwhelmingly men, and rich men to boot, are cutting off access to family planning care and the right to an abortion while at the same time they drive people deeper in to poverty by cutting wages and jobs. Rich women will always have access to abortions or the money to pay for help raising a child or any other perks her status affords her. But for her too, abortion is not an easy decision and in the last analysis must be hers alone to make.

Think of what murderous thugs the people who make these decisions and pass these laws are.  They call themselves pro-life yet have no qualms about spending our money slaughtering people around the world who dare stand up to the US corporations whose interests they serve.  There should be 570 bills in Congress calling for the transfer of spending from war and war production to jobs, housing, education, transportation etc.  When we think of it that way, their ruthlessness and lack of concern for human life placing profit above all things, we might understand why a worker in another country who is a recipient of a much more brutal brand of their violence, either directly or through one of their installed stooges, might consider retaliation of any kind acceptable and the executors of it heroes. There is a reason there was so much security for the British Queen in Ireland, the history of that state and that family in Ireland is one of violence, murder and mass starvation. 

The Wall Street Journal today has a long interview with Henry Kissinger. Kissinger is revered as a hero here in the US and he is undoubtedly a mass murderer of some caliber being hugely responsible for the deaths of some 3 million Vietnamese and authorizing chemical warfare against them. And to think he got the Nobel peace prize.

Family planning should be expanded upon, not cut. And as for abortions, we have to not only demand a woman's right to an abortion in a safe and secure manner and defend the decision as ultimately a woman's choice, but we have to fight for the right of women to have children without it being a burden on her personally or financially.  Along with increasing funding for family planning centers and providing safe abortion on demand, we can start with some examples  that will enable women and families to make a genuinely free choice about family planning:

A $20 an hour national minimum wage or $5 an hour increase whichever is greater
Two years paid pregnancy leave for the parent of choice
Free on sight childcare in the workplace
Family planning centers in each community

I'd support a bill like that.