this right women can never enter fully and equally into society, instead remaining at the mercy of the biological fact that they are capable of conceiving a child.
Therefore defending the — inadequate - provisions of the 1967 Abortion Act is a matter of principle. It is therefore helpful that only a small minority of the population supports David Alton's proposal to introduce a time limit of 18 weeks for legal abortion.
This is shown in a Marplan opinion poll published in the Guardian on 18 January. It found that 77 per cent of all polled, and 80 per cent of women agreed with late abortion where the woman's health is at risk.
In the case of foetal abnormality 67 per cent of those polled and 68 per cent of women were in favour. After a rape, 71 per cent of those polled, and 73 per cent of women were in favour, and in the case of an under age girl, 58 per cent and 57 per cent of women were in favour.
This gives the lie to Alton and his backers in SPUC and Life, who have claimed that their proposal has majority support. In fact the anti-abortion lobby is probably the best organised extremist minority in the country.
It is also one of the best funded. In the first weeks of January anti-abortionists ran double page, full colour advertisements in the Times and the Independent, at a cost of approaching £100,000. The accompanying signatures indicated a marked absence of support from the medical profession, from disability organisations, from women's organisations or from the labour movement.
Unfortunately this lack of popular support has little impact on the Tory and male majority in the House of Commons. Nor on that handful of Labour MPs who consider that their religious views place them above women's lives and party policy and give them a right to decide to force several thousand women a year to continue with an unwanted pregnancy.
There are two reasons for this insistance on stopping legal abortion - for illegal abortion can never be stopped, it is just that many women will die. Straightforward reactionary religious bigotry is the basis of much of Alton's support. Secondly the greater control that women have over their fertility, the greater control they have over their lives, and they begin to demand more. This creates a very subversive force in society from the point of view of the ruling class, and therefore it has to be reversed if possible.
Since the passing of the 1967 Abortion Act, women and their supporters, have had to fight off no less than 13 separate attacks on its provisions. On each occasion these attempts have been defeated by massive mobilisations of women, and of the labour movement.
The Fight Alton's Bill campaign, together with the TUC, is calling for that kind of mobilisation again, on a national demonstration to be held in London on 19 March. Every trade union and Labour Party branch, women's section, student unions, and women's organisation must be alerted to the threat to abortion rights and brought out onto the streets on 19 March.
Alton's proposal does not have the support of the majority of women, nor of the majority of the population. It can and must be defeated.
Socialist Action 22 Jan 1988
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NATIONAL 19 March 1988 Assemble: 11.30am Embankment