This article is part of our pamphlet: “The Communist Fight Against Sexism,” available here: icwpredflag.org/sxse.pdf
Capitalist regimes have long denied millions of women the ability to decide whether or not to give birth. Abortion is illegal in many countries and increasingly restricted in others. Forced sterilization of poor women, especially targeting those from racial and ethnic minorities, has been the tool of racist regimes around the world.
Capitalism has never valued the lives of the babies—or the adults—of our class. It places the responsibility of childrearing on individual women, their partners and immediate family. It replaces the “village” that we need to raise a child with what Marx called the “cash nexus.”
Masses of women around the world are unable to provide for the basic needs of their children. They are forced to make hard choices when they get pregnant.
Women without access to affordable and safe contraception and legal abortion often take the desperate alternative of an unsafe, illegal abortion. Thousands of women die each year due to botched and unsafe abortions. The attack on women’s access to safe abortion is the leading edge of an attack on the health of working-class and other poor women around the world.
Communism and Abortion
What will we do about abortion, and birth control in general, in a communist society? Communism will not treat women’s social and health concerns as less important than men’s health or that of a fetus. We’ll develop better methods of birth control and infertility treatment, and make them available to all.
Health will be more important, period. And the masses will be directly involved in healthcare. We’ll do away with money, wages, rent, and bills to pay. We’ll get rid of the stresses and poisons that kill so many of us now. People will choose freely whether or not to commit to loving partnerships. No one will face the responsibility of feeding, clothing, educating and loving a child on their own.
Communism will also allow us to make the decisions about conceiving children more freely. When we look forward to that communist world, we can begin to think about birthing and raising children in new ways.
The fundamental principle of communist society will be: From each according to commitment; to each according to need. That means that we will not use material incentives or legal strictures to force people to participate in socially necessary work. We reject coercive social relations, and rely on political struggle for everything, from who washes the dishes and takes out the trash, to who changes the baby’s diaper.
If someone refuses to work or to do a particular task, we will not lock them up or make them go hungry. The vision that everyone is both an individual and at the same time a member of a collective suggests a communist answer to questions about birth control and abortion.
Children will be the joy and responsibility of the collective. Thus, having a child will be a decision that involves the collective. Political struggle is the tool for resolving disagreements and decision making. But in the end, no woman will be forced to bear a child, or prevented from bearing one. Neither will she be shamed or punished because of her choice.
More Materials on Sexism
To the Main Page
