Revolution #67, October 29, 2006
Go to revcom.us…
…to understand why the right to abortion is so crucial
On November 9, the U.S. Supreme Court, which Bush has been stacking with anti-abortion justices, is scheduled to hear a case which involves outlawing the most commonly performed second-trimester abortion procedure used by thousands of women. And on November 8, a referendum will appear on the ballot in South Dakota that could codify a total ban on abortion, even to save the health of the mother; anti-abortion activists hope that this law could end up at the Supreme Court and result in overturning Roe v. Wade. To understand why this battle is so crucial to the lives and basic humanity of women, we encourage people to read the following articles at revcom.us:
From—”The Bible and Baby-Killing: The Right to Abortion and the Whole Direction of Society” by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA:
“We have to wage a counter-offensive here, and get to what the essence of the issue is. In the case of the great majority of abortions, over 90 percent, what is involved, in terms of the fetus, is a very tiny clump of cells—it is that versus a woman’s fate. That’s what we’re talking about here. Physiologically and socially, that’s essentially what we’re talking about here—the fate of women vs. a clump of cells, which at that point (during the first three months in particular) are by no means even completely differentiated (into different organs and parts of the body with different specific functions) and certainly are not anything like a developed human being—and are, in fact, a tiny clump of cells. We have to get things back to the real issue.”
From—”The Morality of the Right to Abortion…and the Immorality of Those Who Oppose It”:
“The morality that should be supported and fought for is one that values the rights of women to lead full social lives. It supports social and intimate relations where people respect each other’s humanity and flourish together—and not where women are supposedly commanded by ‘God’ to ‘submit themselves’ to men. This morality sees children as a joy to society, and as ultimately the responsibility of all society, while not compelling anyone in any way to have children against their will. It does NOT, as these theocrats do, sanctimoniously shout hosannas to a clump of cells that might someday become a child—while feverishly upholding the murder of real live children in the war being waged by the U.S. in Iraq, and self-righteously dooming literally millions of other real live children, right in the U.S., to lives of deprivation and punishment—in the name of those same traditional values.”
From—”What Is an Abortion and Why Women Must Have the Right to Choose: Life Cannot and Should Not Always Be Preserved” by A.S.K.:
“The placenta gets formed from a combination of some of the tissues of the woman’s uterus and of the woman’s embryo. It is a mass of tissue rich in blood vessels, which connects the embryo to the woman’s blood circulation system. During the whole pregnancy the fetus will remain attached to the placenta through the umbilical cord. The placenta helps show how the embryo or fetus is very much part of the woman’s body for the whole pregnancy. The embryo cannot get food on its own, clear out its own wastes, or even breathe on its own. It gets oxygen and dissolved food nutrients (and sometimes toxic substances) from the woman’s blood through the placenta and umbilical cord. It gets rid of its wastes the same way, releasing carbon dioxide and urea into the woman’s bloodstream for disposal. Just as a single live cell cannot survive independently of a body, the embryo cannot survive independently of a woman’s body because it is truly part of her.”
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