From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-For Free, Safe Abortion on Demand!

Workers Vanguard No. 975
4 March 2011

Democrats, Republicans Attack Women’s Rights

For Free, Safe Abortion on Demand!

For decades Democrats, liberals and feminists have offered up one concession after another that have whittled away abortion rights and emboldened the anti-abortion bigots, who have in turn launched a renewed legislative offensive. In state after state, Republican politicians have introduced bills aiming to eliminate abortion rights, while reactionary “right to life” outfits have launched a vicious campaign against Planned Parenthood to further limit access to abortion.

The attacks have not just come from crazed right-wing Republican politicians intent on reversing the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. Not long after Roe, the Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976 under Democratic Party president Jimmy Carter, excluded abortion from federal health care services provided to low-income people. Obama’s health care “reform” was in line with the Hyde Amendment, which eliminated abortion coverage from Medicaid. Many often vote for the Democratic Party largely on the basis that it would defend Roe v. Wade in the courts. But, as one concession after another has been made, including restricting late-term abortions, pro-Democratic outfits such as the National Organization for Women have limited their actions to “fight the right” electoral tactics even as abortion rights continue to be axed.

Already, at least 38 states have “fetal homicide” laws. In Utah, women can be charged with criminal homicide for obtaining an illegal abortion or inducing a miscarriage, including through “reckless” behavior. The law was prompted by the tragic case of a desperate 17-year-old who paid a man to beat her in the hopes of inducing a miscarriage. Anti-abortion bigots are now looking to replicate a Nebraska law that virtually bans all abortions at 20 weeks after conception. Across the country, bills are being introduced to force women seeking abortions to view ultrasounds of the fetus—as is already the law in Oklahoma—and to ban any abortion coverage by private insurance companies. In Georgia, a Republican state legislator has introduced a bill that would make abortion the legal equivalent of murder and force the criminal investigation of women who suffer miscarriages. In South Dakota and Nebraska bills were introduced to allow the use of “justifiable homicide” as a defense for the murder of abortion providers.

Through violence, intimidation and bipartisan legal assaults, the legal right to abortion in the U.S. is severely constricted. If you live in one of the many areas where no providers exist, you have little “choice,” unless you have the time and money to travel. Some 87 percent of U.S. counties and 31 percent of metropolitan areas have no abortion services. The panoply of anti-abortion laws and restrictions on birth control particularly targets young, working-class and poor women. The wealthy will always get their medical care, including abortions, whether legal or not.

Seeking to further curtail access to abortion, anti-woman bigots are now targeting Planned Parenthood, which provides essential medical services of all kinds especially to young, working-class and minority women; one in five women will use Planned Parenthood sometime in her life. Scandal-mongering videotapes made by “Live Action,” a reactionary anti-abortion outfit, portrayed a man and woman posing as a pimp and young prostitute seeking health services including abortion, showing them receiving advice from Planned Parenthood workers in various locations. Stirring up the sex panic ever roiling the surface of American politics, the videos set off a wave of Puritanical vapors and hand-wringing, as intended, including among supposed defenders of women’s rights.

Planned Parenthood’s response to this sting operation was cringing. Amy Woodruff, manager of their Perth Amboy, New Jersey, clinic, did her job, giving common-sense advice to the people in the video. This included reassurances of confidentiality, how to evade legal complications and useful health tips (like only “waist up” sexual activity for two weeks after an abortion). But amid the furor, Planned Parenthood fired her, setting a dangerous precedent for others who may need such advice in the future. There is now at least one bill before Congress calling to bar government funding to Planned Parenthood. For our part, we agree with the gossip Web site Gawker’s February 4 headline: “Even Teen Hookers Need Abortions.” We call for the abolition of all laws against “crimes without victims,” which include drug use and prostitution. We oppose “squeal rules” and all other restrictions on abortion directed at minors.

The anti-Planned Parenthood scam recalls the operation launched by right-wing yahoos against the liberal community organizing group ACORN, whose main “crime” was to register poor people and minorities to vote. Despite its close ties to the Democratic Party, Democrats joined with Republicans in voting to defund it, leading to its dissolution.

At its most extreme, bloody and reactionary, the anti-abortion campaign has meant the murder of abortion providers, such as Dr. George Tiller in 2009. Dr. Tiller’s clinic in Wichita, Kansas, now closed, was one of only three in the entire country that provided late-term abortions. Between 1993 and 1998 anti-abortion terrorists murdered seven people for providing abortions: Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida, in 1993; Dr. John Britton, along with a clinic escort, in Pensacola a year later; Lee Ann Nichols and Shannon Lowney at a clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1994; a security guard in a 1998 Birmingham, Alabama, firebombing that also severely wounded a nurse; and Dr. Barnett Slepian in Buffalo, New York, killed by a sniper outside his home in 1998.

The organized labor movement has every interest in fighting for the rights of women. Such a struggle must be waged independently of all capitalist parties as part of the fight for free, quality health care for all, as well as for free, 24-hour childcare, which would address the deep class and racial oppression of poor and minority women. For free abortion on demand!

War on Women, War on Workers

It is no accident that anti-woman attacks have escalated at the same time that the ruling class has undertaken a vicious union-busting offensive, seeking to get rid of nearly every “overhead” associated with the most minimal social safety net. Not only abortion rights, but also funding for medical research, family planning and reproductive health care services for women are being slashed to the bone. This includes the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which serves 9.6 million low-income women, new mothers and infants each month. Likewise, there are proposals to slash grants for prenatal heath care to low-income women—cuts proposed in various degrees by both capitalist parties. The late, great comedian George Carlin, who famously quipped that “not every ejaculation deserves a name,” caught the hypocrisy of abortion opponents: “They will do anything for the unborn. But once you’re born, you’re on your own.”

In such a climate, the recent scandal over a West Philadelphia clinic throws a light on the wretched “services,” such as they exist, that many poor people get. Two women died and many more were mutilated in botched abortion procedures by one Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his ill-trained staff, according to a January Philadelphia grand jury report. Officials had ignored medical complaints about the clinic since at least 1993, and it hadn’t been inspected by health officials for 16 years. Filthy and dangerous, the clinic was, according to the grand jury report, responsible for many injuries to women, including infections and perforated bowels and uteruses.

The state, of course, has gone after Gosnell for performing late-term abortions—abortion after 24 weeks is a crime in Pennsylvania. He is being charged with eight counts of murder, seven of them for aborting late-term fetuses, which should be no crime. It is the anti-woman laws and desperate conditions that force poor, black and immigrant women into such squalid back-alley operations. In the Mantua neighborhood of West Philadelphia, where Gosnell’s operation was located, over 16,000 people live below the poverty line. In all of West Philadelphia, the infant mortality rate resembles that of a Third World country: 15 per 1,000 live births. This is more than double the national rate, which is itself the highest rate of the 33 countries that the New York Times (26 February) described as having “advanced economies.” In West Philly, low birth weight is a major problem. For the women living there, abortion—normally a simple procedure that is safer than childbirth—is not always safe, not always legal and certainly not affordable. Many women have trouble getting the money together quickly, and young women especially are often pounded with guilt by repressive parents, violent boyfriends or hellfire preachers, so they end up having their abortions only at the last moment.

Religious scam artists ply their trade not only in the evangelical Christian bible belt. In Manhattan recently, a Texas-based group called “Life Always” put up a billboard about a half-mile from a Planned Parenthood facility. As part of its national campaign targeting minority neighborhoods, the billboard showed the picture of a little black girl with the grotesque message: “The most dangerous place for African Americans is in the womb.” The billboard went up on February 22; two days later, it was taken down, having outraged much of the city, not least the black populace. Life Always’ pastor, Stephen Broden, ranted: “The survival of our country, our nation is tied to the woman’s womb! And if we are assaulting that womb, if we are attacking that womb, we are on a path to self-destruction!” Such is the repulsive pathology of these bigots, to whom women are destined to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen forever.

Lord knows that Obama rarely passes up the opportunity to reaffirm his credentials as a true believer in the Christian faith. Covering for him, the reformist International Socialist Organization wrote an article on the West Philly case, “Like Roe Never Happened” (Socialist Worker, 25 January), that roundly denounced the right for its attacks on abortion rights but made not one mention of President Obama or the Democratic Party.

For Women’s Liberation Through International Socialist Revolution!

Tens of thousands of women across the world die each year from illegal abortions. Some researchers estimate that in Latin America and the Caribbean the primary cause of death for women between the ages of 15 and 39 is complications from illegal abortions. Poverty and backwardness, enforced around the globe by imperialist domination, mean that the infrastructure necessary to bring basic medical care, contraception and abortion to Third World women is simply not there. Nor will it ever be, short of the destruction of the capitalist system by victorious working-class revolution and the establishment of proletarian state rule. It is precisely the hold of religious obscurantism, anti-homosexual bigotry and the treatment of women as simply the bearers of—and those responsible for rearing—the next generation that must be eradicated by laying the material basis for the full equality of the sexes.

The fight for women’s liberation is a necessary part of the struggle for the emancipation of all the exploited and oppressed masses throughout the world. The main source of women’s oppression is the institution of the family. As we noted in our article, “Fifty Years After the Pill: Still a Long Way to Go” (WV No. 968, 5 November 2010):

“The war on abortion rights has become a spearhead for social and political reaction because at its heart lies the question of legal and social equality for women. Providing women with some control over whether or not to have children, abortion is viewed as a threat to the institution of the family….

“The capitalist class seeks to buttress the family, which, along with organized religion and the state, form a triad that props up the exploitation of labor. To free women from their deeply entrenched special oppression will take a workers revolution to rip this system of exploitation out by the roots and replace it with a workers government to begin the construction of a socialist world.”

Referring to the early Soviet workers republic, Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 October Revolution, wrote in The Revolution Betrayed (1936): “The revolutionary power gave women the right to abortion, which in conditions of want and family distress, whatever may be said upon this subject by the eunuchs and old maids of both sexes, is one of her most important civil, political and cultural rights.” It is this vision of socialist freedom that we continue to stand on today.

From The "International Students for Social Equality" Website-Unite the working class to defend public education and democratic rights!

International Students for Social Equality intsse.com

Unite the working class to defend public education and democratic rights!

Statement of the International Students for Social Equality I November 28, 2011

The attack by UC Davis police against peaceful protesters has shocked and revolted millions of people throughout the world. The use of pepper spray against the students has shown the hostility of the ruling elite to democracy, and the ruthlessness with which it deals with any opposition.

There is much more at stake in this attack than the misdeeds of one chancellor or a few police officers. The actions at Davis are part of a coordinated effort by mayors of major US cities—working with the FBI and the Obama administration's Department of Homeland Security—to shut down Occupy protests through violence. This crackdown has so far resulted in more than 4,600 arrests. Only three days after the violence in Davis, police assaulted and arrested students protesting tuition hikes in New York City.

This response is a devastating exposure of the hypocritical invocation of "democratic rights" by the American government to justify bloody wars and the destabilization of governments abroad. For all its talk about democracy and human rights, the American ruling class is ready to deploy mass violence the moment it perceives any threat to its own interests. One can imagine the uproar in the media if the events at UC Davis had occurred in Syria or Iran.

This police violence is just one component of a broader attack on the social rights of working people all over the world. In Greece, public assets are being sold off and wages are being slashed for the benefit of the bankers. In England, tuition is being tripled. And in the United States, Medicare and Medicaid are being cut, together with funds for public education and other critical social services.

But the working people of the world have shown that they are determined to resist these attacks. In dozens of countries, workers and young people are demanding the right to a future, economic equality, and democratic rights. The latest round of protests in the United States is part of this global response, which has so far led to uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as mass protests in Europe and the United States.

The key question is that of program and perspective. What is the way forward in the fight to defend public education, social equality, and democratic rights?

Break with the Democrats and Republicans!

The police repression of the Occupy demonstrations makes clear that the state— the politicians of both big-business parties, the police and the courts—is not a neutral body. It is a capitalist state, which functions to defend the property and political rule of the corporate and financial aristocracy.

Ultimate responsibility for the attack on UC Davis students and the Occupy movement as a whole lies with Democratic Party lawmakers-including California Governor Jerry Brown and President Barack Obama. The Democrats as much as the Republicans are seeking to force the working class to pay for an economic crisis brought on by rampant speculation and the failure of the profit system.

The Brown administration is pursuing billions of dollars in cuts to social programs, including health care, education, and retirement. The bank bailouts overseen by the Obama administration have restored the wealth of the Fortune 400 to record highs, even as millions suffer from mass unemployment and poverty. In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the Democrats and Republicans are engaged in a bitter struggle over the best way to slash trillions from government spending on the federal, state, and local level.

Chancellor Linda Katehi's own past highlights the international character of the attack and the coordinated response of the entire political system. She was involved in a panel that recommended the removal of restrictions against police raids on campuses in Greece, for the first time since the downfall of the military junta in 1974. In the United States, she is one of a couple dozen administrators that have worked with the FBI to monitor political activity on college campuses.

Turn to the working class!

Students are being made to pay for the crisis of capitalism together with the working class as a whole. Among workers there is widespread opposition to the police attack at UC Davis and sympathy for the Occupy protesters. The conditions exist for forging a powerful unity between young people, fighting against tuition hikes and for the right to a decent future, and workers facing an unrelenting attack on their jobs and living standards.

Students at UC Davis and other Occupy protesters cannot restrict their activity to the campuses and encampments. They must turn to the working class—to all those who live from paycheck to paycheck, and work in the offices, factories and social services—and transform this sympathy into a powerful social and political movement.

A turn to the working class means a rejection of the various forms of identity politics that have come to define what is "left" in America. It is notable that the chancellor of UC Davis is a Aoman and that tne president of the United States is an African-American. And yet the conditions for workers of every race, gender and ethnicity are worse than they have been for generations. So much for the claim that the political system can be changed by placing women and minorities in positions of power! It is necessary to focus on what unites working people and students— our common opposition to the dictates of the corporate elite.

A turn to the working class does not mean a turn to the trade unions. Efforts to create a "student-labor alliance" through coordination with the AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions are in fact aimed at subordinating the struggles of students and workers to the Democratic Party, which the trade unions unconditionally support. These organizations do not defend working people, but only the interests of highly paid union executives. They have overseen a devastating collapse of living conditions without any resistance.

Take up the fight for socialism!

Young people should draw definite lessons from the attack against students at UC Davis. It is impossible to reconcile the most elementary social demands with the present social system. Attempts to peacefully petition the powers that be are met with pepper spray and police truncheons.

Capitalism has failed— in the United States and throughout the world. In a world where new vechnoiogicai vistas offer boundless potential for the improvement of life, millions of young people are being told they have to languish in poverty and unemployment, facing a future of unending war and economic crisis.

The alternative to capitalism is socialism. Socialism means genuine equality— a society in which production is organized in the interests of social need, not private profit. Socialism can be achieved only through the establishment of a workers' state, which will transform the major banks and corporations into democratically controlled and publicly owned institutions.

For decades, the American ruling class has unceasingly denounced socialism, precisely because it fears it so much. As it enters into struggle, a new generation of young people must rediscover the historical traditions of the , socialist movement. We urge all students who agree with this program to join the International Students for Social Equality, attend our meetings, and help build a socialist movement of the working class!

From The Women's Rights War-Zone- The Boston Walk For Choice- February 26, 2011

Click on the headline to link the Walk For Choice website for information about women's rights and for a description of the February 26, 2011 Walk for Choice in the Boston Commons held just after the rally in solidarity with the Wisconsin public workers unions.

Markin comment:

Sometimes in politics, at least on the subject of political slogans, there are no-brainers. Today was one such day. Wisconsin, Women's Right, Same Struggle, Same Fight!

*From The Pages Of "Women And Revolution"-"Women's Oppression In Capitalist America"

Click on the headline to link to a "Women and Revolution" article, dated March 12, 2010concerning women's rights to free abortion on demand, the historic position of the communist movement.

March Is Women's History Month

Markin comment:

A timely article on the ever-diminishing right to abortion in America and also honoring the heroic Doctor George Tiller, murdered last year for being one of the few doctors courageous enough to do provide them.

*Fight For The Communist Program -Free, Quality Health Care For All- A Guest Commentary

Click on title to link to a "Workers Vanguard", September 25, 2009, article in favor of socialized medicine, free, quality health care for all. How about that for real single payer health insurance? Also included in a 1991 article on the same subject from the pages of "Women and Revolution, in 1991 around the time of the last "great debate" on health care. Most of the article reads, unfortunately, like it was written today.

*Honor Doctor Tiller- Defend Abortion Providers And Abortion Clinics!

Click On Title To Link To March 21 2009 Commentary On The Late Heroic Abortion Provider Kansas Doctor George Tiller.

Commentary

markin said...

This following message in quotes (along with some other comments) was left on a March 21, 2009 commentary on the legal defense of Doctor Tiller on this blog after I posted the information there about the murder of Doctor George Tiller on May 31, 2009.

“Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "*Defend Dr. George Tiller!- Free Abortion on Deman...":

Barack Obama should seek punishment against the murderer of Tiller.”

Markin responds: More appropriately, for leftist militants and other progressives, is not the question of whether Barack Obama should seek punishment against the murderer of Doctor Tiller but that we should be actively propagandizing and agitating for the defense of abortion providers and abortion clinics by working class organizations and other interested progressive organizations. Starting right now! No more Doctor Tillers! Defend Abortion Providers! Defend Abortion Clinics!

*Honor The Memory Of Kansas Abortion Provider Doctor George Tiller- Free Abortion On Demand! Defend Abortion Providers And Clinics!

Click On Title To Link To Associated Press Article On The Murder Of Kansas Abortion Provider, Dr. George Tiller. Despite many personal trials and tribulations he provided this service to Kansas women in need in the face of many legal, political and social threats. All honor to his memory. And the best way to do so is to fight, and fight hard, for the right to free abortion on demand. Forward!

******

Below is a repost of an article from the Partisan Defense Committee concerning the most recent legal harassment of the late Doctor Tiller. Honor his memory.

Guest Commentary

March Is Women's History Month

This entry is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. At a time when everyone is "keeping it on the low" about President Barack Obama's retro position on abortion noted in the article Doctor Tiller, a real hero of the women's rights movement (when it counts) needs serious defense.

Free Abortion on Demand!

Defend Dr. George Tiller!

After decades of intimidation and terror, courageous abortion provider Dr. George Tiller goes on trial March 16, threatened with 19 years in prison. One of the few remaining physicians providing “late-term” abortions in the U.S., Dr. Tiller and the staff of his Wichita Women’s Health Care Services have repeatedly been targeted by anti-abortion fanatics. Tiller’s clinic was bombed in 1986, and in 1993 he survived being shot several times in an assassination attempt. Tiller faces 19 misdemeanor counts of violating the state’s law requiring two doctors, without financial or legal ties to each other, to sign off on abortions done late in pregnancy (in Kansas, the arbitrary calculus of “late-term” is set at 22 weeks). Prosecutors claim that Tiller had a financial relationship with the doctor who provided a second opinion. These bogus charges are being used to railroad a courageous doctor who puts medical science and concern for his patients above his own well-being. The labor movement and all defenders of women’s rights must stand in defense of Dr. Tiller and demand: Stop the witchhunt against George Tiller! Drop the charges!

The attack on Dr. Tiller is part of a drive, by legal and extralegal means, to intimidate abortion providers and ultimately do away with women’s right to abortion. According to papers filed by Tiller’s lawyers, the district attorney obtained under false pretenses a court order directing a Wichita hotel to turn over registration records containing patients’ names. Under the pretext of investigating “child rape,” these records were then matched with medical records that Tiller was required to submit to the state, in order to discover the names of Tiller’s patients. D.A. Phill Kline, who launched the legal crusade against Tiller, was so frenzied in his campaign against abortion clinics that the state Supreme Court in December chastised him for showing “little, if any, respect” for “the rule of law” (Topeka Capital-Journal, 6 December 2008).

Nevertheless, on February 25 the judge in the criminal case against Tiller denied a defense motion to throw out prosecution evidence and refused to dismiss the case. Noting that the charges against Tiller had been filed by Kline’s successor as attorney general, a “pro-choice” Democrat, the judge ludicrously concluded that Kline’s actions “could not have tainted the investigation and prosecution of this case” (AP, 25 February).

The law being used to go after Tiller is just one of a slew of measures which have made abortion virtually inaccessible to a large number of women in this country. This is especially true for the young, working-class and poor, who already have limited access to decent health care, childcare, affordable housing or even enough food to feed their families. Today, 36 states prohibit abortions after a specified point in pregnancy. Fully 34 states require one or both parents of young women under 18 to be notified and/or consent to an abortion. And 87 percent of U.S. counties—97 percent in nonmetropolitan areas—do not have an abortion provider.

Abortion is a politically explosive issue because it raises the question of the equality of women. This simple medical procedure provides women with some control over whether or not to have children. For this reason it is viewed as a threat to the institution of the family, which is a crucial prop for the system of capitalist exploitation. In order for safe and legal abortion to become a reality for working-class, minority and immigrant women, we call for free abortion on demand as part of free quality health care for all.

The increasing curtailment of the right to abortion reflects the policies of both the Democratic and Republican parties. As we wrote in “Drop the Charges Against Dr. George Tiller!” (WV No. 924, 7 November 2008):

“The reactionary demagogy of the Republicans is longstanding and obvious enough. But the fact is that there has been little ‘choice’ for poor women since Democrat Jimmy Carter (who now has become an international ‘human rights’ icon) signed into law in 1977 the Hyde Amendment eliminating Medicaid coverage for abortions. During Democrat Clinton’s eight years in office, welfare for mothers was axed, safe access to abortion was effectively gutted across much of the country, as the number of abortion providers plummeted 14 percent between 1992 and 1996, and a huge number of restrictive laws were passed.”

President Barack Obama provoked a hysterical uproar among anti-abortion bigots when he nominated as Health and Human Services Secretary Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius, a “pro-choice” Democrat who sponsored an April 2007 event at the governor’s residence with Tiller and his clinic’s staff. Yet during the election campaign, Obama told the Christian magazine Relevant that he opposed mental health exceptions for “late-term” abortion bans because “I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother” (AP, 4 July 2008). In office, Obama stripped from his economic stimulus package a proposal to allow states to expand Medicaid coverage of contraception and other family planning services. Obama’s proposed 2010 budget has been hailed by liberals for setting aside $634 billion for health care, but the reality is that about half that sum would come from spending cuts in programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

The attacks on abortion rights are part of a campaign of social reaction aimed at regimenting the entire population—not just women, but black people, immigrants, gays and the working class as a whole. While the anti-abortion bigots call themselves “pro-life,” they enthusiastically support the racist death penalty. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the industrialized world.

The fight for abortion rights, decent living conditions and free quality health care mandates that we build a revolutionary workers party. The working class has the social power necessary to mobilize in defense of not only women, but all the oppressed. But to exercise that power it is necessary to wage a political struggle against the labor bureaucracy that keeps working people tied to the Democratic Party. The elimination of the right to abortion would redound against all working people. As we have often underlined, democratic rights either go forward together or fall back separately. The working class is uniquely situated to bring capitalist rule to an end. For women’s liberation through socialist revolution!

*Defend Abortion Rights- Defend Kansas Doctor George Tiller

Click On Title To Link To May 31, 2009 Associated Press Article On The Murder Of Doctor George Tiller. Honor his memory.

Commentary

No Dorothy You Are Not In Kansas Anymore- Nor Do you Want to Be

In the whirlwind around the ongoing intense presidential contests the issue of abortion, except the attempts by fellow Republicans to beat Rudy Giuliani over the head with his pro-choice position, has settled into the back burners as a dominant issue compared to the economy, health care and Iraq. The general election in November will be another and, perhaps, different story as will the next presidency when another Supreme Court Justice will probably be selected. This issue is, however, hot right now in the hinterlands and down at the base of society, or what passes for it, in Kansas. I am reminded that in the last presidential cycle the journalist Thomas Franks devoted a whole book to the subject of Kansas politics and the long term historic turn around from its devotion to prairie populism and socialism to its current hate-filled evangelically-drive bedrock Republicanism in defiance of all reason.

So why am I beating up on the land of Dorothy and Toto today? Well, the good citizens of Kansas and the citizens of a few other western states in the 19th century, that is during their more progressive days, enacted legislation that permitted citizens who gather a certain number of signatures to convene citizen grand juries to investigate wrongdoing that was ignored or neglected by the elected executive authority. The purpose then was to curb the rampant corruption, associated mainly with the expansion of the railroads, during the age of the ‘robber barons’. A good idea then? Yes. A useful idea for today? Hell, yes. I can think of any number of situations where we leftists would want to use this tool to investigate racial and sexual incidents, unfair labor practices and other issues that get short shrift from state and local prosecutors. So what is the problem?

The problem is that we leftists are not the only ones who know how to delve into the old books to dust off legislation in order to make use of it for our political perspective. Over the past couple of years Kansas anti-abortion activists have used this tool to convene citizen grand juries, most recently on January 8, 2008, to investigate the doings of Doctor George Tiller one of the few late term abortion providers in the country. That, my friends, is the raw and ugly heart of the matter. Is this meant to harass, intimidate and possibly imprison Doctor Tiller and scare away his patients? Hell, yes. Does that mean we want to do away with citizen-petitioned grand juries? Hell, no. What we do, as we always do is, fight to keep abortion legal by our own means. We also fight for the real issue here which is a different type of society where there will be free abortion on demand and nobody will think anything of it. Until then though- Defend abortion rights! Defend abortion clinics! Defend Doctor Tiller! Send messages of solidarity and support now!