hello this is Dr Harriet Fraad with capitalism hits home today i want to talk about abortion
which is always hotly contested when women are trying to survive and the right wing is trying
to control women's bodies abortion has always been with us so it's not like a recent invention
linda gordon in his in her book the social history of birth control talks about how in
biblical times women use the peach pit as an intrauterine device to prevent pregnancy and
nobody thought too much about it my grandmother and my husband's grandmother both had multiple
abortions they'd go to the midwife have an abortion they wouldn't advertise it but it wasn't
a big national issue either it comes up as an issue around the control of women
which is part of a right-wing agenda now why should the right-wing care
well one of the things that a right-wing needs to control a population that might unite
is to divide them as much as possible and to give white males supremacy so the division of white men
from women and from minorities serves the upper classes and prevents the unity of the working
class of the mass of people who do the work in the society and one way they divide men from women is
to emphasize the differences between men and women and to make men ascended over women
they do that by putting laws passed overwhelmingly by male legislators
against women and to control women's bodies it was very clear in the recent victory of abortion
rights in argentina where the catholic church allied with the upper classes
and the fascistic parties to try to fight abortion rights whereas the indigenous movement
the labor unions the left and progressive women united and passed abortion rights
in a very catholic country for the first time but the alliances were very clear
also if you want women to be controlled you need to try to get them to think of themselves and be
treated as breeders for men and that their usefulness in society is as breeders instead
of as workers partners equal human beings in every respect you consign them to their biology
and that is what's happening today as the right wing gains force in the united states it has
two expressions in trying to control women's reproduction one is to push women
into childbirth which i should say that that abortion rights should be guaranteed by the
constitution because a forced pregnancy is a cruel and unusual punishment and the constitution
forbids cruel and unusual punishments many more women die in childbirth than from an abortion
and the pain of childbirth is far greater than the pain of an abortion
and the complications in childbirth are far more destructive than any complications in
abortion which is a simple procedure and now with the two pills perfectly safe
and so why should people inflict a cruel and unusual punishment well for a lot of
reasons one is to divide the working class and we should understand that abortion is also a class
issue rich women have always been able to get their personal physicians to arrange an
abortion for them it's poor women and middle class women who don't have that kind of money
and don't have an expensive private physician in whose office you can perform an abortion
those women are the ones denied an abortion women who are the majority
of american women who go to a place like planned parenthood which is safe and public and low cost
and so we're talking about real class divisions here the original women's movement
of which i am a proud founder of the second wave feminist movement had two prongs
to our abortion rights women our abortion rights movement one was the ability to have a free
abortion to have that right like i should say every other western industrialized
wealthy country has except the united states and the other is to stop forced sterilizations because
control of women's bodies has also been a weapon to stop us from having stop undesirable people i.e
poor people or peop minority people from having children and that may sound terrible and only
from the old days but that's not true just this year in a privately owned ice detention center
in irving county detention center in georgia they were forcibly sterilizing the ice members
who were women there and altering their reproduction so that they could not have children
because the right wing doesn't want minorities and immigrants who are not desirable i.e not norwegian
of course the norway the people of norway know better than to immigrate here but to stop
women from being able to have children they don't want any more children who aren't wealthy
in this society and they want to control the women who are here and who are american
and push more white americans to have unwanted children which is of course not only terrible
for women because pregnancy that you don't want is a cruel and unusual punishment but a
terrible curse on children it's hard enough to be a child so powerless but to be an unwanted child
is a terrible punishment for children that should also be banned by the constitution
way back
in the early part of our country there were forced sterilizations of native americans who somehow got
caught up in our medical system or in our criminal system and of black people and brown people
so that controlling women's reproductive capacities go both ways forbidding abortion
for white middle class and poor people and sterilizing poor black and brown people
and that still goes on in this the case in irving georgia which was only revealed
by a very courageous woman dawn wooten who blew the whistle on this and because of that
is blacklisted in her hometown in georgia and can't work as a nurse as she worked
in the ice detention center as a nurse and was privy to all these terrible things
and had the courage to speak up about it as a whistleblower and who is being punished by it
so that abortion is also a class issue but the main point of abortion prohibitions
is to force women into unwanted childbirth that takes their time away from the workforce
and that makes them dependent on whoever the male provider is
and this is happening in the context of america now as women are more and more
empowered partly because we've had to work to make up from
for capitalists outsourcing male jobs particularly well-paid union jobs
and changing this country from a manufacturing center to a service economy with much lower pay
and so women have been forced into work and once forced into work have enjoyed the power
that independent income gives us because in the old family available really only to white people
because minority men never got a family wage in the old system women were like feudal serfs
they worked and created use values cleanliness cooked food sexual satisfaction child rearing
social connection of a man with his relatives and friends
and his children emotional services of understanding in exchange for a place to live and
work and like the feudal serf who had a certain share of the crop that he she or they created
so that they could survive women were able to also eat live in a neat place
have their children benefited get something out of the emotional services from friends or at least
if not from their husbands and for service their service was more like what you'd call
that of a feudal serf who also created youth value things
gave a share to the lord of the banner and was allowed to survive on the share remaining
as that whole economy of the household has broken down women are part of the labor force
and have some independence and may not want a feudal surf job at home while they have a job
in the capitalist economy outside of work however by keeping women pregnant
you force them home you force their dependency on men and you force them in a subordinate position
because if you're looking after many children you don't have
much time or energy for political activism or career advancement so that it is a directly
anti-female thrust karl marx and friedrich engels in their work said you can tell the
advancement of a civilization and of a nation by the way they treat women
and as our country goes backward in time and as our people die younger and younger
and as fewer and fewer people have any children because they don't believe in the future
and as we lose our wars and go backwards right wing is trying to assert male supremacy and
white male supremacy and to divide the mass of workers from each other so that we don't all
together demand a more just and economically possible future together and so abortion
is an element of class control through controlling women's bodies
and it has always been so they've always been abortions it's just that poor women have had
to try to abort themselves or go to unsafe conditions because having an unwanted child
particularly with someone who is intolerable to live with is a cruel and unusual punishment
what happens when you ban abortions is women still try to abort unwanted children
they just are much more likely to bleed to death and die and much less likely to be healthy and be
able to parent if they want to and be available for a wanted child and so this assault on women
is part of a right-wing thrust because abortion has always been here
it will be here and the way you treat it
is whether you is a real testimony to the question of whether you want to inflict a cruel and unusual
punishment on the majority of the people and women are a slight majority in the united states
or whether you're going to give women and men the honor to decide if they want a child together
and women most of all because women it's women's bodies that go through a pregnancy and it's women
who are held legally responsible for children men are supposed to pay even when they're not
around but two-fifths of them pay nothing after five years and so that they don't necessarily pay
economically or see their children it's women who are left with the burden and it's women
who therefore have the right to decide here we're not in a society that takes care of its children
or its women we don't even give what every other nation but five there's four nations
in the world that don't give maternity and or paternity leaves to the united states
swaziland somalia and papua new guinea wow that's the company we're in very poor and backward
countries and the united states because abortion rights are part of recognizing the humanity
of women and not trying to create a hierarchy that forces women into a cruel and unusual punishment
so that we need to look at the thrust to take away the right to an abortion in the united states
as just that a right-wing attempt to divide the mass of workers to create a male hierarchy
and to consign millions of children to lives of abuse
and so that that's what we're dealing with right now in the united states and taking away abortion
rights is a token of our backwardness marx and engels were right you can tell the advancement
of a civilization or society by the way that society treats women thank you this podcast
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and i want to specially thank democracy at work for making this possible
goodbye from capitalism hits home and Dr. Harriet Fraad
you