Resist & Mobilize to Stop the Ban On Abortion in South Dakota

Organize public acts of protests this week [click here]

What many said could never happen just did. South Dakota has banned abortion, and other states are gearing up to do the same.

The South Dakota law only makes an exception in cases where a woman's life is at risk (not for rape or incest), prohibits the sale of emergency contraception, and claims that life begins at fertilization. Doctors who perform abortion would be charged with a crime.

This is truly a state of emergency for the lives and rights of women. If this law is upheld, it will consign many women to dangerous back-alley abortions. This nightmare is not a future we can accept. Now is the time to act.

Anti-abortion groups and politicians see an opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade now with the federal courts (including the Supreme Court) increasingly stacked with far-Right fundamentalist Bush appointees and are viciously seizing it. Disgusting as it is, this opportunity is real.

This abortion ban in South Dakota is one more leap on a deadly trajectory towards banning abortion (and birth control), and imposing a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism on society. And this is part of the Bush regime’s whole program of unjust imperial wars on the world, torture, and a fascist remaking of society.

But this cannot be allowed to go any further. As the Call from World Can’t Wait puts it, "silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn — or be forced — to accept. There is no escaping it: the whole disastrous course of this Bush regime must be STOPPED. And we must take the responsibility to do it."

The refusal of the Democrats to oppose these moves to ban abortion is all the more reason for millions of people to take independent political action to stop these attacks on the right to choose, and reverse the whole direction of society these attacks are a part of. When leading Democrats like Sen. Hillary Clinton call abortion a "sad, even tragic choice" and urge "common ground" with fascists and religious fanatics, it is up to us to defend women’s right to choose. Face it: the Bush regime and its fundamentalist supporters are setting the agenda on abortion and everything else right now, and the Democrats are falling in line. We need to get our own dynamic going, mobilizing resistance to each new outrage and building a movement to drive out the Bush regime.

The World Can't Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime is mobilizing public protests – rallies, marches, street theater, forums, banner drops, etc. – all this week to repudiate this ban on abortion and the whole trajectory it is a part of. Contact a local chapter near you, or print out copies of this flyer and hold your own actions.