"... the signs are ominous and very evident and a chill wind blows". US Supreme Court Justice Blackman expressed his concern when, in July 1989, the Supreme Court (stacked with Ronald Reagan appointees) upheld a Missouri state law banning the provision of already limited public health insurance and public medical facilities for pregnancy termination services. Over the last few weeks, anti-abortion groups — encouraged by the anti-woman, anti-poor policies in fashion with neo-liberal governments — have worked themselves into a frenzy in their mission to truncate women's reproductive choices.
First was the single mother — already out of step with conservatives' model families — who wanted to abort a twin because she couldn't cope financially with two more children. Anti-abortion groups fell over themselves to offer the woman money, "horrified" at the decision to abort one twin "merely on the grounds of choice", said the Sydney Morning Herald. The news that the termination had already occurred arrived only after anti-abortion groups began taking legal action to prevent it.
Days later, the same British anti-abortion groups were "delighted" by a woman who chose to continue her pregnancy with eight foetuses. This time the media, including the paper which bought her story for £100,000, were on the other side, castigating the woman's decision not to abort some of the foetuses and publishing irrelevant personal information intended to smear the couple.
Last week's US Republican convention gave the most coherent political expression to the religious conservative agenda. The convention — dominated by the white supremacist-linked Christian Coalition, which opposes abortion and immigration and supports mandatory school prayers and the death penalty — included in the Republican program support for a constitutional amendment banning all abortions. This is despite a Washington Post-ABC poll showing that 72% of the US public disagree with such a move.
The "family values" agenda is linked to other planks of the Republican platform, for lower taxes and smaller government. Conservatives worldwide are talking up the family and "individual responsibility" and talking down governments' role of providing basic social services funded through progressive taxation.
The same ideological push, heralded by the Coalition's election campaign emphasis on family responsibility and scapegoating of welfare recipients, is occurring here. The National Commission of Audit report ordered by Howard after the election is a fairly detailed plan for moving basic social services — health, education, aged care, public transport, social security, telecommunications — from the public to the private sector, through the introduction of greater user-pays charges.
But the emphasis on individuals families, rather than governments, taking responsibility for social welfare is not the monopoly of conservatives. Nominally social democratic or liberal parties are complicit in a lesser version of the same program, as US Democratic President Bill Clinton's decision to sign a welfare bill ending 60 years of federal government assistance to poor families shows. Australia's 13-year Labor government was on the same track, obsessed with reining in public spending, privatising and lowering taxation of the big end of town.
This anti-social agenda is causing massive suffering, especially amongst the poorest people. The anti-choice, family responsibility agenda will fall particularly hard on women, who are already performing the vast bulk of unpaid work of looking after children, older people and those with disabilities, and feeding and clothing the work force. The campaign against women's rights to reproductive choice is a big part of the tilt at forcing women back into the home to replace disappearing social services.
By Jennifer Thompson