Roe Roe Roe your Boat toward the Revolution

Crawdads and Taters: Red State Rebels

With the midterms coming up in a few days, the Democratic Party is promising to codify Roe v. Wade IF and only IF they win big in the midterms, even though they already have the majority in the House and the Senate, and the Presidency. Meanwhile far-right Christian fascists, in the streets as well as those sitting on the Supreme Court, are threatening to take away even more of our basic economic and human rights. In this dire situation, we use a class-based lens to look at who, in our system of racial capitalism, has had access to reproductive rights throughout US history and who has never had access, and we discuss abortion rights as an economic bread-and-butter issue. We also do a brief overview of reproductive rights under socialist and communist countries, whose founding doctrines have long understood that socialism and communism cannot be consolidated without the liberation of women. As early as 1913, Vladimir Lenin was advocating for protecting women’s reproductive rights and warning us about the dangers of class war on poor and oppressed women if abortion was not free, safe, and legal. Here in the United States, where health outcomes for poor and working-class women are terrible, where abortion rights have never been codified, and have been eroded year after year since our relatively late legalization of abortion in 1973, we finish by looking at the sad history of the Democratic Party in protecting these rights, while they simultaneously dangle those rights above our heads like a carrot, fundraising off of them. Of course, as socialists, we know that you can't vote your way out of a corrupt political and economic system. And we recognize the repeal of Roe v. Wade as one of many fundamental human rights that will be casualties of class war, within this ongoing global shift toward fascism. If we can understand the loss of these and other rights within this context, we can also see the urgent necessity for international socialist, communist and anti-capitalist movements to unite in order to mobilize for this battle for reproductive justice, as just one of many battles that will require our unity and solidarity as we build a socialist revolution. Reading Notes: Reproductive Rights and the Fight Against Fascism The Assistance, Not the Resistance Overturning Roe: Slavery, Abortion, Maternal Mortality and the Disparate Effect on Women of Color Abortion in Cuba vs US shows which country is truly democratic Democrats Had 50 Years to Save and Protect “Roe.” They Failed. The Hyde Amendment: Restricting Abortion Coverage for 40 Years Indigenous women face extra barriers when it comes to reproductive rights Abortion rights are economic rights Dark Money Led To This Moment