Now it is Roe v. Wade
THE ATTACK
ON PLANNED PARENTHOOD PART OF A LONG REACTIONARY TRADITION
(From
Sunday, February 20, 2011)
Harry Targ
Vivay Prashad, in his fascinating book, The Darker Nations, traced the
rise and subsequent demise of the Third World Project from the 1950s to the
1980s. The Third World Project, mainly the mobilization of poor and
marginalized peoples around the world, envisioned the construction of
progressive governments that would provide for basic social and economic needs
and institutionalize democratic participation in political life.
This project was derailed for several reasons. One of the most significant was
the willful construction by threatened elites of fundamentalist religious
institutions.
In the Middle East, the tottering dictatorships plowed financial resources into
the creation of fundamentalist Islamic organizations. “Political Islam” was
introduced into global political culture to divert and divide social movements
for fundamental change. Political Islam called for a return to the past and a
rejection of modern secular ideas about social and political institutions.
Religious dogma worked to replace visions of egalitarian societies. Ironically,
in order to maintain stability, United States foreign policy supported
insurgent Islamic fundamentalist movements in various places such as
Afghanistan.
In Latin America, religious fundamentalism took a variety of forms. The
leadership of the Catholic Church launched a frontal assault on newly created
radical regimes, such as in Nicaragua, that based their political principles on
a theology of “liberation.” Also, Evangelical Christian organizations, with
funding from worldwide economic elites, infiltrated Latin American countries
experiencing revolutionary ferment, urging the poor to reject earthly solutions
to their problems.
In North America, the religious right mobilized financial resources to appeal
to an electorate frustrated by challenges to U.S. hegemony overseas and
economic stagnation at home. In each political venue, whether dominated by
Islam, Christianity, or Judaism in the case of Israel, religion was used to
divide and conquer.
The sector of the population most impacted by fundamentalisms of every kind is
women. Women are forced out of the political process as patriarchies
reinstitute top-down control of their political, economic, and cultural lives
and their bodies. Women’s institutions, particularly ones that encourage
progressive public policies, are marginalized. Often politicians using
religious dogma as their rhetorical tool, support public policies that punish
poor women, women of color, and progressive women in general. In sum, the
resurgence of religious fundamentalism has been used to divide majorities of
people along various lines that defuse their solidarity and the targets of such
assaults are most often women.
A current example of this strategy of attacking women by raising the specter of
religious orthodoxy occurred Friday February18 when the House of
Representatives approved an amendment to budgetary legislation which would end
all funding of Planned Parenthood, a national organization that provides vital
reproductive health services to low-income women. Congressman Mike Pence (IN),
who introduced the proposal, declared that American taxpayers should not have
to pay for abortions. He failed to mention that they don’t because the
government currently forbids the use of federal dollars for most abortions.
Consequently, that could not have been the motivation for this legislation.
Rather, most of the 240 House members who voted to cut all allocations to
Planned Parenthood wished to raise the religious issue to justify their general
goal of ending public health care and guarantees for basic public health
services for all. Pence failed to make note of the fact that Planned Parenthood
gives contraceptive assistance to poor women, does HIV tests, screens women for
cancer, and provides reproductive health care for women. Planned Parenthood,
like ACORN the community organization that was victimized last year, is under
assault to achieve political goals. The attacks serve to divide the electorate
to destroy another organization that serves the needs of the working class, in
this case working class women.
Data from the Guttmacher Institute point out that in recent years almost half
of women who need reproductive health care are not able to afford it. Four in
ten women of reproductive age had no health insurance.
The health care reform legislation of 2010 opens the door for expanded
insurance coverage for reproductive health and family planning. Among those
without health care as of 2009 were 14 million women of reproductive age.
According to the new health care law, if not defied by state governments,
Medicaid programs will expand family planning services to lower income families
in years ahead.
As the Pence amendment suggests, existing health services for women and
prospective new ones are under threat by health care opponents. They want to
destroy major providers of health care for women such as Planned Parenthood.
And, in the end, they want to destroy any form of public health for people.
How to do it? Transform the discourse from providing health care for the
people, a broadly accepted idea, to religious dogma, in this case anti-abortion
dogma.
It is time for progressives to respond. Attacks on Planned Parenthood (and the
end of the right to choose) are attacks on the working class, especially people
of color, and women, and the very idea that governments are created to serve
the needs of the people.
