From the May-June 2022 issue of News & Letters
ABORTION BANS vs. WOMEN AND FREEDOM
How many women are going to die or be traumatized by botched, back-alley or coat hanger abortions? What trauma will be forced on women who have been raped? What is going to happen to children when women will be forced to birth more and no one is willing to care for them? How will mothers handle being forced to carry severely deformed or severely ill fetuses only to have them die at birth? This is not “pro-life.” It is pro-death and pro-misery.
L.S.
Detroit
***
This will not stop women from having abortions. It just makes abortions dangerous. What do they do to the man who participated in the pregnancy?
L.G.
Midwest
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Our side must fight harder because this is awful and it will reach way beyond reproductive rights sooner than anyone thinks. This is straight out creeping fascism.
S.S.
Michigan
***
The editorial “Attack on abortion harms democracy” (Jan.-Feb. 2022 N&L) was viscerally angry. I am pro-abortion but I’m alarmed at labeling two of Trump’s Supreme Court picks as sexual predators. I have hope in Kavanaugh and Thomas that the madness that made sex a crime will end, because they have experience of being falsely accused by angry women whose only goal is to oppress men. Incarceration is a far greater injury than sex—even if the sex is unwanted, it is still only sex. The author does not really hate oppression, she only hates being oppressed. She is willing to oppress men, as evident by labeling Thomas and Kavanaugh “sexual predators.” I hope sex will begin to be decriminalized.
Prisoner
Calipatria, Calif.
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The author responds: The Calipatria reader gives himself away when writing that “even if sex is unwanted, it is still only sex.” No, it’s rape, it’s assault, and it’s illegal. He wants rape decriminalized. He is also wrong about me: I do hate oppression and I hate being oppressed. And I’m not alone. I hope this reactionary Supreme Court will find out very soon how unalone I am.
Terry Moon
***
The leaked Supreme Court decision left me gutted. I began to think about the right-wingers founding their opposition to abortion on the concept of the fetus as person. They define personhood however they want. Not so long ago, Black men were defined as “three fifths of a man.” Not to mention that now “personhood” doesn’t extend to a pregnant woman.
Community activist
Detroit
***
Those of us who saw the consequences of unsafe abortion procedures KNOW the Supreme Court bowing to the GOP NO LONGER fosters the rule of law, rather the rule of fascism.
S.R.
Michigan
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Reduced abortion access equals higher maternal and infant mortality. It’s typical of states denying women full reproductive care to also have poor social services and much racism, classism and sexism. In light of more mass shootings, states with no or little gun control don’t seem truly “pro-life” to me either. Merci to Canada for abortion and other reproductive care rights and access, and for real gun control. I feel blessed to have gotten my abortion when it was safe and legal.
Kathleen
Nova Scotia
***
Wealthy women will travel, poor women will die.
C.L.
New Jersey
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I don’t agree with abortion, but who is going to take good care of all these kids? No one is doing it now. There are kids on the street with nowhere to go, kids dying because they have no food, so they have to commit crimes just to live. Who really cares? What will happen to the women when they have a baby they don’t want or can’t take care of? To prison they go, and what help do they get? No one should be allowed to tell a woman what to do with her body.
Prisoner
Charleston, Mo.
***
Texas governor Greg Abbott, what a mensch! Not only has he made access to abortion almost impossible, he’s also enabled rapists and batterers to turn in women who try to get one as well as those who would help her. When he signed the bill, he crowed that it “ensures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion.” Oh, how much he must love children. Oh, wait! This is the same guy who now wants to deny undocumented migrant children access to public education. Does he thinks fetuses carried by migrants are also “unborn children” since he doesn’t give a damn about them once born?
Feminist
Chicago
ANTI-WAR, PRO-DEMOCRACY VOICES FROM RUSSIA
I protested in Moscow on April 30 for the freedom of political prisoners and against repression, aggressive wars, annexations and deportations. Seeing the success in Ukraine’s fight against the defrosted Mordor, some countries are beginning to help. Ukrainians gained some rights thanks to their achievements in defense, cohesion and rapid self-organization. They won the right to report the West because help comes too slowly, and is never enough. For the fact that some are secretly cooperating with the Kremlin for gas supplies. Germany and France have proven wanting in these matters, but now express an intention to improve. And the U.S. was vacillating before finally deciding on real support. Now everyone wants to at least look like friends of Ukraine.
After the “resolution of the Ukrainian question,” the “European question” will inevitably be at stake. The Orcs are killing us, shelling Kyiv in connection with the UN Secretary-General’s visit. They fire guns from trucks into Kharkiv and Odesa. They refuse to give a humanitarian corridor to Mariupol civilians.
Will this barbarism end by May 9, an important date for the Kremlin? They may create a #victory_parade over a fictional fascism in Ukraine, Europe and the U.S. For this, they are ready to sacrifice the lives of soldiers and “civilians” everywhere and in any quantity. Especially since half of the Russian population approves it without hesitation. We held a flash mob on this topic, within the framework of #strategy_30. We warmly congratulate Crimean Tatar and activist prisoner of conscience of Crimean Solidarity #Nariman_Jelyal on his birthday and wish him a day with his family and friends, already in the free world.
Bellingcat news says: “Russian soldiers, beware! If you commit a war crime, the world will know and you will be punished. Bellingcat will do its best to identify all participants in attacks on the civilian population of Ukraine. We remind you that war crimes have no statute of limitations.” Glory to Ukraine.
Vera
Moscow
***
On April 2, picketers in the city of Murino talked about Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, and the reasons why the war became possible. Among them is the hypocrisy formed under the influence of a corrupt propaganda society, and the authoritarian monopoly of information resources and the suppression of freedom of speech. A main reason is the fear of repression instilled in people and transmitted from generation to generation. Passersby’s reactions ranged from support to curses, with the accompanying citation of the entire zombie-speaking agenda. A man talked about his father, who survived the hell of World War II in Stalingrad as a child, and now is in the same situation in Kyiv under Russian shelling.
Olga
Murino, Russia
***
On April 18, we held a second action in Murino in support of the Crimean Tatars. Despite massive repression against them since Russia’s annexation in 2014, they continue to resist. They also moved to new temporarily occupied territories in the Kherson region of Ukraine. Our action was stopped by the police. They could not find a reason for detention, so they fabricated the protocols on the street, claiming that “Nazis are in power in Ukraine.” This Putinism is the same on every level of the state. The occupiers will suffer defeat in Ukraine.
Vlad
Murino, Russia
PATRIARCHY ATTACKED
I was really excited by Mich. State Senator Mallory McMorrow’s speech, calling out State Senator Lana Theis’s attack on her. In a campaign speech Theis accused McMorrow of “grooming children [for use in pornography] and sexualizing kindergarteners.” This is mouthing QAnon crap. The video of McMorrow’s speech had 14.7 million views. She was saying that people like her—“a straight, white Christian suburban mom”—need to not let these attacks pass. That it’s “absolute nonsense” that children learning about Black history will feel hate or if white that they are hated. LGBTQ+ children commit suicide at four times the average rate. This has got to stop.
Feminist
Detroit
***
The article “Beijing sham Olympic opening ceremony” (March-April N&L) is right on! The “family” theme is highly suspect. China’s government is not a proponent of diversity in their vision of family or country. Which makes especially nauseating China’s use of a Uyghur to light the Olympic flame.
For freedom!
Halifax
***
Josh Hawley aims to narrowly define what men and women are, by claiming that men are under terrible attack by the Left (read Democrats): “They [the Left] want to define the traditional masculine virtues—things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness—as a danger to society.” While he claims that he is “not here…to tell you that men are victims,” he just can’t help himself: “Still—can we be surprised that after years of being told they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness, and pornography, and video games?” Wow, you just have to laugh. You can just see some little kid who gets caught being bad wailing: “It’s not my fault, the feminists made me do it!”
Maggie Soleil
Kauai, Hawaii
PUTIN’S BRUTAL WAR
“Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt” (March-April 2022 N&L) is deeply critical of Putin, while staying on the side of the peoples from Russia and Ukraine. It is from there that new moments can be born. I would project this criticism to Ukraine’s government, which has to appear as one with the masses, but the seed of capitalist contradictions also lies there. The U.S. has done for decades in the Middle East what Putin is doing now with Ukraine, with no evident signs of World War III in the air. It is precisely now the intervention of the U.S. and its Western allies–as if saying, “Nobody can invade other countries but me”—which casts the clouds of a new global onslaught. We on the Western side are also on the target of political, economic, and if needed armed intervention as part of world war “policies.” Harsh times are in front of humanity, but also a very revolutionary solidarity can be born from this.
Héctor
Mexico
***
The long decades of intense rivalry between the U.S. and Russia have created the political “soil” that has given rise to so much anger and fear. From the deadly nuclear arms race, the constant terror of possible nuclear war has poisoned the spirit of the entire world, creating lasting harm to the human race. The only solution to the war in Ukraine and the danger of future wars lies with the U.S., Russia, and the whole world community realizing that all nations must find a path towards working together.
Rama Kumar
Fairfax, Calif.
***
The defenders of Mariupol will go down in history as heroes, mentioned in the same breath as the heroes of Aleppo. I will never forget the expressions on the faces of the children who were trapped in the steel plant, as Russian “bunker buster” bombs came down on them. If Trump had won the election, he would have believed everything Putin told him and done nothing to help Ukraine. Remember, he blames Ukraine for his first impeachment. There would be protests in the good old USA against this turn of events, which Trump would use as an excuse to invite Russian soldiers to “restore order.” While this may seem extreme, it cannot be discounted. While the war in Ukraine is distant from us in geographic terms, it really isn’t that far away.
Curtis
Battle Creek, Mich.
***
“Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine puts the future of humanity in doubt” describes the resistance within Russia, showing it is more than even the impressive multi-dimensional and massive street protests. Raya Dunayevskaya often said that when different rulers start wars, their real enemy is at home. The compassion shown for Ukrainian and Russian people, listening to them, is very important; not using their experiences just to get to an analysis. Especially important is the analysis by Russian socialists: “Putin’s defeat would give Russia a future.” The article places Putin in the context of a failing capitalism and the scramble to forge tighter relations with China, against the U.S. It also refuses to make the false dichotomy between nationalism and revolution, again by listening to the people involved. The frightening unifying of economic and war policies—“a threat to life”—is shown to be defeated only by “permanent revolution, which does not stop at national self-determination and political freedom, but reaches for a society where people are not alienated from their lives, especially their labor.”
Subscriber
Michigan