by Bob Avakian
February 1, 2022
The essential question at stake with the escalating attack on the right to abortion is the fundamental status of the half of humanity that is female—whether they will be enslaved or emancipated. Of course, in the case of the extremely small number of females who have transitioned (or are transitioning) to males but who retain female reproductive organs and might get pregnant, they should have the right to abortion, and to decent health care overall, without any stigma or discrimination—and in general attacks directed against trans people must be actively, vigorously opposed. But, in terms of its essential purpose and objective, the attack on the right to abortion is not aimed at trans people. The essence of what is involved is not “inclusion” (or the lack of “inclusion”), nor is this about “bodily autonomy” in some general and abstract sense (a concept which, by the way, would logically include people coming from a very bad place, such as those anti-scientific lunatics and selfish individualists who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID). The attack on the right to abortion is a move to further intensify the already horrific oppression of women, denying them control of their lives and their very bodies, reducing them to breeders of children, cruelly subordinated to men and a patriarchal male-supremacist society. Forced motherhood is in fact female enslavement. Anything which waters down or distracts from this essential truth is objectively aiding this fundamental attack on the half of humanity that is female—is undermining the fight for their emancipation, and the emancipation of humanity as a whole from any form of oppression and exploitation.