Women's Rights: Texas Attacks Them, in Afghanistan the U.S. Claims to Protect Them with Drone Killings – and “White Feminists” Get Blamed for Caring about Women's Rights!

Boston Women's March, January 2017. Photo © Glenn Ruga

September 16, 2021

Internationally, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has long called for the protection of the rights of women and girls, proclaiming that women’s rights are human rights. For WILPF US, it is very clear that women’s and girl’s rights must be protected – in the U.S. and in the world.

In the US, the latest unconstitutional Texas law is simply one more in a series of laws – in Texas and other states – depriving women of the ability to make meaningful choices in their own lives and in their families’ lives. As our allies at the Kairos Center say, “The rollback of hard-won reproductive rights in Texas will drive so many women further into poverty – the message is clear: our bodies and lives are not our own.” (9/10/21 email, “A week of reckoning”).

I know that WILPF US members care deeply about maintaining and expanding the protections gained by the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. We must defend all kinds of reproductive choice – including abortion rights. No reversible birth control method is 100% effective, and the modern U.S. economy often leaves no reasonable space for unplanned pregnancies. Worse yet, the so-called Christian values of most of the “Pro-Life” political Right oppose the government, community, or even educational actions to actually support families and reduce instances of unwanted pregnancies.

It is ironic that abortion rights (and peace) activist, Patricia Maginnis, passed away (unexpectedly) on August 30, only three days before the September 2 Supreme Court decision not to block the extremely restrictive Texas law. Otherwise – since she was active with the Occupy Oakland movement and campaigned in 2016 for Bernie Sanders – she, even at age 93, might have had the standing to speak out against the Supreme Court ruling and be heard.

Maginnis was probably the first outspoken abortion rights activist in the U.S.

In the 1960s, Patricia Maginnis and her partners in the “Army of Three” disseminated a wide range of (illegal!) abortion information – including “how-to” steps for home abortions – to thousands of women across the U.S. Read more about this radical civil disobedience activist in this hard-hitting Slate article.

In the 1960s, Maginnis’s civil disobedience approach was more confrontational and radical than what Planned Parenthood was ready to do. Today, state and federal laws have defunded and even criminalized Planned Parenthood. I anticipate that WILPFers will continue to support quality sex education in schools and women’s reproductive health care – including Planned Parenthood – in their communities. Some of us may move to take local direct action, such as taking up again the work of “the Janes” – the underground abortion access group in Chicago – or by actively teaching the safe use of the home technology of menstrual extraction.

If only the setbacks on Choice were the only traumatic events of our times, then we could focus on healing from our experiences and taking action in that area. 

Yet, of course, we have the crises of the pandemic, the climate-related catastrophes, the ongoing police excesses. Coinciding with these is the national focus on the September 11 anniversary. All of these join the horrifying airport coverage of the long-overdue Afghanistan  withdrawal to assault us, traumatize us, and keep us reactive, instead of responsive. At a time when we have the highest needs for human services, instead the massive waste of fund through an ever-increasing military budget continues to waste funds hugely.

With the public dismayed by images of the airport chaos (and in the absence of coverage of the privation in sanction-struck Afghanistan), the U.S. military and the Right quickly pass the fault for this situation to Biden, to the Afghan people, to –  to – someone else. Recent critiques suggest that somehow this debacle is the fault of “white feminists”.  Some feminists in the “west” have focused their attention on issues more important to white and middle-class women, and – like so many in the U.S. Congress – their concept of what would actually be helpful to women in Afghanistan is distorted by the U.S. imperial lens. However, WILPF is a feminist organization, and the large majority of members in WILPF US are white. Nonetheless, our demands for rights for women and girls go beyond “Western rights” and “white women’s issues”, seeking to be sensitive to the cultural and economic realities of different countries.

In addition to choices about one’s reproduction, key women’s rights include the rights to equal access in education, equal pay for equivalent work, and equal property, marriage, and other rights under the law. Depending on different cultural and economic structures, in different countries other rights will be especially important. Consequently, in the U.S. (and other industrialized nations), WILPF US supports crucial human rights that particularly affect women: the right to high quality childcare and the closely related right of caregivers – caring for children, for the elderly, and for the sick – to a just caregiver wage

The corporate media choose to magnify only a tiny section of feminist thinking and action.

Coverage has largely ignored more anti-capitalist feminist analyses, such as how unpaid women’s work props up corporate structures. Who pays for the “externalities” of raising children, preparing meals, and keeping house? It is largely women – and almost never business.

Meanwhile, the media generally overlook U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, killing hundreds to thousands of non-combatants – women, men, and children. And where is the media focus on the $2.3 trillion cost of the war (see the Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths) and the regressive tax system structure that forces the 99% to pay that bill? In the U.S., poverty rates for women continue to be higher than for men.

And at the same time a contradictory idea is presented, making convenient "cover". The U.S. military and Right Wing continue – as they have for the last 20 years – to present the excuse of "protecting the rights of women" to justify the brutal practices and attacks in Afghanistan, along with ongoing violations of Constitutional rights.

We in WILPF, as feminists, see restrictive state abortion laws and court rulings as blocks to women’s agency in life-changing matters – keeping women as second class citizens. For women of color – widely suffering from race-based inequalities in the U.S. – such laws can make for third-class citizenship. Poorer women – whites, Blacks, Indigenous, and other women of color – are especially affected by such laws. Economic inequities in the U.S. further restrict abortion access options for working class and low income women; we know that wealthy women will continue to find clean/safe abortions.

With ongoing attacks on abortion rights, reproductive choice is an increasingly important justice and equality issue. What capacity do we have, in these difficult and demanding times, to be active in some way on this issue? Even mutually committing to a group of a few others to a single phone call each week can be important and ultimately effective.

As with any political issue consistent with WILPF principles, WILPF members can turn to our national issue committees for guidance and organize within them (including through subcommittees) on this topic.

WILPF US issue committees focus branch and member work on particular areas, providing a national political structure for analysis, strategizing, and long-term planning and actions.

WILPF members can also work locally in their branches – both with issue committees and independently – on what matters to them. I’d like to hear more from branches! What are you choosing to work on?

If the setbacks on choice were the only crisis of our times, our way ahead would be clear. Yet, as our two-week Congress in August reminded us, we have many crises and many issues to address. View the Congress recordings here and make your choices. If you can do only a little, watch for national issue committee initiatives to take action. Or undertake more, working with your branch, some other local body, or by committing to ongoing legislative activism needed for voting reform, moving the money, and more. WILPF US depends on the initiative of its members and branches to keep on moving forward!

Darien Elyse De Lu
WILPF US President