A couple of weeks ago I attended a burlesque show which, as part of Toronto’s Mayworks festival, provided both a visual and oral history of burlesque. During the show I found myself reflecting on how the image and representation of women’s bodies and their sexuality in the public domain has changed over the years from one of a fully clothed bourgeois pose to the bad grrrl, gender bending dominatrix. Unfortunately when it comes to women’s right to choice and control over their own bodies, not as much has changed; in fact the clock is rolling backwards.

While always an area of moral contention, control over women’s bodies has once again become a very public battleground as women struggle against religious, male notions that threaten their right to choice. Not so shocking, perhaps, is the role that George W. Bush has played in this frightening reality facing not just American women, but women around the world.

WAR ON WOMEN

While the world was watching the American imperialist manoeuvres in Afghanistan, Bush quietly prepared a coinciding attack on women. One of the first fundamental strikes occurred in January of 2001 with the imposition of the “Mexico City Policy”, known as the “Global Gag Rule”. This legislation imposes restrictions on non-governmental organizations (NGOs) overseas and denies US funding to any foreign NGOs that use endowments from any source to: perform abortions; provide counselling and referral for abortion; or lobby to make abortion legal or publicly accessible. Non-compliance results in a loss of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID. For those NGOs who have rejected the Global Gag, the price is not just monetary; they have been forced to cut vital services, raise fees or, in some cases, close or privatize services. With the desired curtailment of women’s access to healthcare choices abroad, Bush then shifted his sights closer to home.

As the American military moved from Afghanistan into Iraq, Bush used the opportunity to roll back the evolution of legalized abortion. In November of 2003, Bush signed the “Partial Birth” law criminalizing abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy. It is the first federal statute to restrict abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision giving women the legal right to abortion. A number of pro-choice organizations have appealed the legislation to the Federal Court, resulting in a temporary court injunction preventing the law from being enforced while under appeal.

Not to be outdone, Bush struck again. In April of 2004, he signed the Unborn Victims of Crime Act, a federal law that confers legal status to a fetus injured by crimes against pregnant women. Under this legislation, if a pregnant woman is injured the perpetrator could be charged with two separate crimes, one for injuring the woman and the second for potential harm to the fetus. Choice activists fear that, at a minimum, this law will be used to prosecute pregnant women for drug or alcohol abuse, further eroding the private individual rights of women while continuing to ignore the systemic issues of poverty, access and lack of education. There is also another chilling possibility. Taken to its extreme, the law could grant embryos and foetuses full human rights and thus open a floodgate of precedents allowing Roe v. Wade to be overturned. These are not empty fears. With several US Supreme Court judges soon to retire and new appointments to be chosen by Bush, the bench could very well swing further to the right and, in the process, overturn women’s right to legalized abortion in America.

The impacts of such draconian measures are already being felt here in Canada. Although few are aware, the rate and access to abortion services in Canada has drastically declined in the past five years. A 2003 report provides shocking evidence that abortion services are inaccessible to the majority of women. Only 20 per cent of hospitals throughout the region currently perform abortions – that’s less than one in five. Just as troubling is the steady increase in government funding for anti-abortion or “pregnancy counselling” or “crisis pregnancy” centres.

Clearly, a legal medical procedure that has been accessed by hundreds of thousands of women for centuries is being held hostage by an agenda set by a small right-wing religious-based minority and it is women who are suffering.

MARCHING FOR CHOICE

This full-scale war on the lives and health of women was the stage for what has become one of the largest marches in US history. On April 25, 1,150,000 people, representing not just white middle class American women but a cross section of people participated in the March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC. Organized by seven major US organizations, representing Feminist Majority, Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women, Black Women’s Health Imperative, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, National Abortion Rights Action League and the American Civil Liberties Union, the march challenged Bush’s anti-women policies and the resurgence of right-wing religious groups that have risen in his shadow. The message sent was one of choice, access, freedom, justice – and vote Democrat.

As someone who travelled seven hours by bus to attend the march, I was surprised and disappointed by the stark emphasis on electoral politics. While the vast size and energy of the crowd was awe-inspiring and will hopefully revitalize and inject power and capacity into the beleaguered US women’s movements, the organizers of the march focused more on voting than protesting. Speaker after speaker vocalized the need to vote in the coming election. During the course of the day I was hounded to register to vote, and the line at the voter registration booth never stopped. Clearly the organizers of the march believed that if Americans vote out Bush in the fall election, women’s rights will be saved. One speaker went so far as to scapegoat Ralph Nader as the person responsible for this war on women – because he, in “their” terms, split the vote and cost the Democrats the election.

GRASS BUT NO ROOTS

The hyper emphasis on electoral reform clouded the march and drove home a depoliticisation of militancy in the crowd. While the march was diverse, there were few visible signs of grassroots organizing. Literally. With the march so tightly stage-managed and organizers giving away thousands of dollars worth of placards, stickers, buttons, and t-shirts, there were very few personalized placards. I couldn’t help thinking about how many abortions could have been provided with the tens of thousands of dollars I felt had been wasted.

With worldwide poverty reported as the single greatest barrier to reproductive and sexual rights, the fight for choice is not simply about voting Democrat or Republican. It is not even simply about a fight for quality abortion services or preserving women’s rights over their bodies. The fight for choice must be posed much more broadly. It must include health care that is public and accessible, free education, literacy programs, living wages for workers, proper nutrition, basic sanitation, a healthy environment, and public transit. Without these fundamental basic rights – which many American women and women around the world are denied – there will never be equal access to healthcare. Voting will not solve these problems.

What is needed is a collective strategy and a movement that coordinates its tactics and its struggles rather than imposing simple band-aid solutions that don’t build roots for social change. Progressives can no longer take for granted that the battle for choice is simply a battle ground over women’s bodies. Considering the US doesn’t support federally or state-funded medicare, women don’t have to be among the lowest income bracket to find abortion services unreachable. A growing majority of working American women simply can’t afford reproductive health services of any kind – whether it is abortion, oral contraceptives, condoms, or education resources. Questions of choice are irrelevant when women are not able to access even the most basic services because of class and economic inequities. Thus class emancipation is and should be considered a battle for destroying gender and racial power relations, a battle that can bring a means to a larger end.

WHERE ARE WE?

Fundamentally, the battle against BUSH is an international battle that directly impacts women worldwide, but the question remains: Where is the movement? While women’s organizations in the US have identified George W. and his Republican government as the target, the battle must be waged on many fronts. Here in Canada we have much to be alarmed at when women’s rights are treated as private domains. The challenge before activists is to move beyond the current over-reliance on elections and legislative reform, focusing instead on developing grassroots movements that recognize choice is not simply about abortion but a multiplicity of issues that form a web through and among the fight against the war on women. If we really and truly mean that we’re never going back to the days of clothes hangers and back alley abortions, then battles inclusive of the fight and the identities within it must be waged continuously and systematically to preserve and hold onto the threads of women’s rights and access to health care. Words and visions are vital and necessary, but so far I am still waiting for more than a bureaucratic, staged-managed, movement for choice.

Barely a Right Access to Abortion in Canada
By Irina Ceric

While there has been no law criminalizing abortion in Canada since the Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in the Morgentaler case, there is also no law or policy guaranteeing women access to free, safe and confidential abortion services. Unlike in the US, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms makes it almost certain that abortion will never be illegal again in Canada. But ever-shrinking funding, government policies that leave the provision of abortion services up to individual doctors or hospitals, rather than seeing it as an as absolute responsibility, and the anti-choice movement’s ongoing attacks on health care providers have resulted in a right which often rings hollow.

The Tories’ restructuring of Ontario’s health care system in the mid-1990s resulted in the closure or merging of hospitals which had provided abortion services, while funding for new community clinics was eliminated. And while abortion providers continue to suffer violence and harassment at the hands of anti-choice activists, medical students must fight for abortion and reproductive health training which is otherwise often omitted from medical school curriculums.