Roe Wasn't a Constitutional Protection, It Was a Substitute for One
It's time for a new abortion movement, led by working people, that's untied to electing Democrats and ready to fight for an Equal Protection Amendment to the Constitution!
The long-anticipated death of Roe v. Wade, struck down in a historic ruling June 24, is being lamented by many liberals and left–reformists as the death of a constitutional right. This description is wrong and obscures the fact that Roe was not a progressive leap forward.
It abruptly ended a debate among working people about the need for abortion as an essential right, by leaving it to a capitalist court, instead of winning abortion as a social conquest, like Black and Women’s Suffrage and the Bill of Rights. So, the struggle picks up right where it left off. It’s now up to us to complete the task.
The debate over abortion was still being hashed-out at the apex of the Civil Rights Movement, in 1973, when a Supreme Court ruling used the controversial legal theory of “implicit rights,” which it itself created, declaring the Constitution implicitly protected abortion. As Socialist Workers Party central leader, Mary Alice Wate…
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