For: UIW-FI
The struggle of the women’s movement worldwide is shaking the earth in the fight against the capitalist governments, which deny our rights. We carried out the second international strike of women against wage inequality and adjustment plans, we took to the streets against gender and sexual violence and for legal abortion and conquered with the mobilization to advance the right to abortion in Ireland. Because we know that the history of our rights is that of conquest in the streets, this 28S we have the challenge of promoting a global day for legal abortion.
In the context of the wave of women’s struggles, the fight for legal abortion in Argentina generated a green tide that spread throughout the world, with immense international solidarity and with the awakening of this fight in Latin America, region where in most countries abortion is either restricted or totally prohibited. In Chile, in Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Colombia and Brazil, women took up this struggle again. The green handkerchiefs became a symbol that represents the fight for the right to decide over our own bodies. Likewise, very important mobilizations have been carried out in several cities in Brazil, Chile and Mexico.
The Catholic Church, one of the main institutions responsible for the illegality of abortion throughout the world, is going through a severe crisis due to its reactionary role in the struggles of the women’s movement and diversity. But also involved in the scandals of sexual abuse of children and adolescents, which sparked mobilizations during the last trip of Pope Francis to Ireland, where more than 14,500 people have been declared victims of sexual abuse by members of the church with the concealment of ecclesiastical hierarchies. To this, we add a judicial report in Pennsylvania that relieved more than 300 priests involved in 1,000 cases of sexual abuse of the Catholic Church in the United States. Months ago, the Pope was forced to resign all the bishops of the Chilean Church for the mega judicial cause of sexual abuse of children and adolescents, involving more than 150 members of the church, with more than 250 causes of abuse.
Product of the rebellion of the women’s movement on a global scale, is that today we are in a better position to continue giving the fight for the right to abortion in 40% of the world where it is still clandestine. Reflection of this is the presentation of the project of decriminalization of abortion in Chile or the judicial presentation made by PSOL in Brazil to end the criminalization of women who decide to interrupt their pregnancies.
On the 28th day of international action for the decriminalization and legalization of abortion, we have to continue on the streets to carry out the second global cry for the right to decide on our own bodies. So that the more than 1,400 million women who live in countries where access to abortion has some kind of restriction we can decide. To end with the illegality of this right that the patriarchal capitalist system tries to keep in hiding to keep us submissive and controlled, to super-exploit us. And above all, to end the more than 47 thousand women who die every year due to complications related to clandestine abortions. Unsafe abortions are responsible for 8 to 11% of global maternal mortality, and it is the working, poor, young and migrant women who end up paying with their lives. It is the capitalist governments that are responsible for the clandestinity and death of women for having an abortion.
Also this 28S we have to continue in the streets against the attempt to establish obstacles in countries where women have already won the right to abortion, through conscientious objection or cuts in the health system, as in the United States with the reactionary Trump´s government.Like the Spaniards and the Poles did it, there is with the women’s movement that we can stop the attempts to restrict the right to decide on our bodies.
From the International Workers’s Unity – Fourth International we call the whole of the women’s movement, feminist organizations, political parties and trade unions to organize actions in different countries, to continue in the streets for sexual education to decide, contraceptives for do not abort and legal abortion to not die. And for a women’s movement that fights against patriarchal oppression and joins the struggles of the rest of the oppressed and exploited sectors in a socialist perspective throughout the world.
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
