The following statement by the International Bolshevik Tendency has been
distributed at abortion rights events in Dublin and Cork.
Since October 1983, the constitution of the Republic of Ireland has enshrined a
supposed ‘equal right to life’ for a foetus and the woman carrying it.
Marxists completely reject this reactionary proposition and its corollary: the prohibition
of abortion in cases where the potential mother’s life is not directly threatened. Such
‘pro-life’ legislation has had fatal consequences for many women around the
world:
‘A World Health Organisation report shows that almost half the world’s
abortions are unauthorised and unsafe. In East Africa and Latin America, where religious
conservatives ensure that terminations remain illegal, they account for almost all
abortions. Methods include drinking turpentine or bleach, shoving sticks or coathangers
into the uterus, and pummelling the abdomen, which often causes the uterus to burst,
killing the patient. The WHO estimates that between 65,000 and 70,000 women die as a
result of illegal abortions every year, while 5 million suffer severe complications. These
effects, the organisation says, “are the visible consequences of restrictive legal
codes”.’
—Guardian [London], 26 February 2008
Women in Ireland who can afford to fly to Britain for an abortion can escape these
horrors, but those who are young, poor or immigrants without papers are stranded on this
anti-choice island. Yet even in Britain the limited abortion rights that exist today are
under attack. The 1967 Abortion Act legalised the procedure up to the 28th week of
pregnancy, but in 1990 this was lowered to 24 weeks. In May 2008, the House of Commons
rejected proposals to reduce it further to 22, 20, 16, and even 12 weeks. These proposals,
which foreshadow future attempts to ban abortion outright, are dangerous in themselves as
young and menopausal women are often unaware they are pregnant until relatively late, and
many foetal abnormalities are not detected until 18-20 weeks of gestation.
British prime minister Gordon Brown, while personally claiming to oppose further
restrictions on abortion services, allowed Labour members a ‘conscience
vote’—a manoeuvre that could have had tragic repercussions for thousands of
women on both sides of the Irish Sea, as dozens of his MPs, including several cabinet
ministers, supported the reactionary measures.
George Galloway, the central figure in the now defunct Respect coalition, did not turn
up for the vote, but his opposition to a woman’s right to choose is a matter of public
record. According to the bigots of Right to Life UK: —Throughout his parliamentary
career he has consistently opposed abortion on demand and late abortions’
(www.righttolife.org.uk).
Galloway, the only MP elected under the Respect banner, was for several years actively
promoted by the pro-choice reformists of Britain’s Socialist Workers Party (SWP), elder
sister of the Irish group of the same name. To paper over the contradiction between
Galloway’s position and their own, the SWP avoided having Respect take an official
position on abortion, leaving Galloway free to do as he wished.
The 1967 Abortion Act has not been applied in Northern Ireland during the British
occupation, and a recent proposal to extend the law’s ambit to the Six Counties was
withdrawn in the face of furious opposition from all major religious and political
leaders:
‘Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady, Methodist president the
Rev Roy Cooper, Presbyterian moderator Dr John Finlay and Church of Ireland primate
Archbishop Alan Harper said abortion legislation should be decided by the Northern Ireland
Assembly, where there was a large anti-abortion majority, rather than by
Westminster….
‘An amendment has been tabled which would provide for abortion in the
North, but the DUP [Democratic Unionist Party], Sinn Féin, Ulster Unionists and the
SDLP [Social Democratic and Labour Party] are opposed to the proposed extension.’
—Irish Times, 17 May 2008
‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’ in the Republic of Ireland
The regulation of female sexuality and reproductive activity has always been central to
women’s oppression:
‘While the form, extent and intensity of women’s oppression has varied
among different societies, and in different historical periods, it has always been closely
linked to women’s role in the reproduction of the next generation. This, in turn, is
ultimately shaped by the requirements of the prevailing mode of production and its
accompanying social structure.
‘The subjugation of women under the capitalist “free market” is
rooted in their central role in the family as unpaid providers of the domestic services
necessary for the maintenance of society. These functions include primary responsibility
for food, clothing and cleaning; for the care of the very young, the aged and the sick;
and for meeting the varied emotional and psychological needs of all the members of the
household. The family provides these services more cheaply for the ruling class (both in
economic and political terms) than any alternative. The need to maintain the family as the
basic unit of class-divided societies thus constitutes the material basis for the
subordination of women.’
—1917, No. 19
The Irish constitution ‘recognises the Family as the natural primary and
fundamental unit group of Society’ (Article 41.1.1) and ‘the necessary basis
of social order’ (Article 41.1.2). The basic law also ‘recognises that by her
life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good
cannot be achieved’ (Article 41.2.1). The social emancipation of women requires the
expropriation of the capitalist exploiters, who derive real material benefits from female
oppression. In order to do this, the state that serves and protects the capitalists must
be smashed and replaced by the rule of the workers and oppressed.
While the influence of Catholicism, a traditional bulwark of Ireland’s rulers, is
declining, the Catholic Church still runs 92 percent of the country’s primary schools. The
constitution stipulates —that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God’
(Article 44.1), although reference to ‘the special position of the Holy Catholic
Apostolic and Roman Church’ was deleted in 1972. The obscurantist clerical hierarchy
opposes contraception as well as ‘abortion, abortifacient pills and devices, the
abortion pill and the morning-after pill, destructive embryo and embryonic stem cell
research, genetic engineering, euthanasia, etc.’ (www.catholiccommunications.ie, 5
October 2007).
Ireland’s two largest ‘socialist’ organisations, the Socialist Party (SP)
and the SWP, both nominally uphold a woman’s right to choose, but have failed to mention
the issue in electoral campaigns. The platform of the ‘People Before Profit
Alliance’, in which the SWP was immersed for the 2007 Dáil election, said
nothing about abortion rights. The SP’s manifesto for the 2004 European and local
elections also avoided the question.
Marxists in Ireland fight for the separation of church and state and the creation of a
completely secular education system. Opposing the attempts of religious reactionaries to
poison the minds of youth with social backwardness and superstition requires unflinching
advocacy of free and universal access to contraceptives as well as free abortion on
demand. It also means advancing a series of measures necessary to begin to liberate women
from the shackles of the nuclear family, including the right to immediate divorce at the
request of either partner, extended parental leave for either partner at full pay, full
employment at good wages, free quality healthcare (including care for the disabled),
24-hour childcare, and a guarantee of decent housing for all.
United-Front Action for Abortion Rights!
Marxists participate in united-front campaigns alongside reformists, sectoralists and
proponents of other non-revolutionary ideas to advance the interests of the oppressed. In
doing so, we do not conceal our political views and neither demand that our partners
support our programme nor take responsibility for theirs. The Cork Women’s Right to Choose
Group, in which we are active, has the following basis of unity:
‘The Cork Women’s Right to Choose is a single-issue group; a loose
alliance of women and men who believe that a woman has the right to control her fertility.
We believe that abortion should be treated as a health issue and not as a criminal law
matter. We campaign for full safe and legal access to abortion and reproductive health
services for all women in Ireland regardless of income, age, sexuality, race, ability,
geography, immigration status, or culture.’
—http://corkwomensrighttochoose.blogspot.com
Choice Ireland, a larger abortion-rights coalition, is organised on a different
basis:
‘We proudly declare ourselves to be a feminist organisation. We reject
the negative connotations that have been attached to feminism in recent years (mainly by
its enemies). We call for all women who share our aims and principles to reassert
ownership of the word.’
—http://choiceireland.blogspot.com
Among the founders of Choice Ireland are the ostensibly revolutionary anarchists of the
Workers Solidarity Movement. Revolutionaries do not endorse feminism because it is a
cross-class ideology that views gender inequality, rather than social class, as the
fundamental axis of social oppression. This logically leads to promoting unity between
working women and their ruling class ‘sisters’, and thus limits the fight for
women’s rights to what is compatible with the continuation of capitalist rule. While
Marxists can work with feminists in concrete struggles, we consider feminism to be an
ideological obstacle to women’s liberation.
Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!
The anti-abortion alliance of the political and religious establishment across all 32
counties, along with the attempts to impose new restrictions in Britain, demonstrates that
a woman’s right to choose will never be secure under capitalism. Working people and the
oppressed must struggle to sweep away the muck of ages by establishing an Irish workers’
republic within a Socialist Federation of Europe.
Women’s liberation will only be achieved when the provision of the domestic services
traditionally performed within the nuclear family (childcare, housework, food preparation,
etc.) are socialised as the material foundations of a classless society are laid. A
workers’ revolution that expropriates capitalist property and opens the door to a
socialist economic order requires an organisation capable of providing political
leadership to all of capitalism’s victims. The model for such an organisation is the
Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky which led the Russian working class to power in
October 1917 and immediately began to lay the basis for the emancipation of women as it
struggled to spread socialist revolution around the world.