Because we are socialists, we oppose abortion and its legalisation. We oppose it for the same reason that we oppose other attacks on life: the death penalty, torture, hunger, militarism, war, and environmental destruction.
We sustain that these are values the Left should defend. We are self-managing socialists because we defend the socialisation of the means of production; because we fight against people’s exploitation by imperialist forces; and because we defend human life as a supreme value.
Those who have legalised abortion in the world have been totalitarian regimes, Nazis, communists, and liberal capitalists. It is men like Robert McNamara (of Vietnam and World Bank fame) who have most encouraged the acceptance of abortion, realising its convenience for the domination of global capitalism. Although Hitler refused it for Aryans, he allowed it for all others under his command.
Human life is lost on destroying the fertilised egg in a woman’s womb. It is not simply a part of that woman’s body, but a distinct human life. It is only a matter of time before old people, disabled people, and the incurably ill, are added to the list of those not considered ‘productive’ for society.
Today there is no affirmation more reactionary than that which says one person has the right to decide whether an unborn child should be born or not. It is the most absolute idea of right of property conceivable, further even than the right of a slave owner over a slave. It is shameful for the Left to raise the flag of this perceived right. Even worse, the Left has allowed. the political right to hypocritically monopolise the opposition to abortion.
We reject that shameful posture and believe that the Left should separate itself, in light of the advanced embryological knowledge of today, from this position. We are not just left-wingers who happen to oppose abortion. We oppose it precisely because we are left-wingers. Human life has supreme value from the point of conception until natural death. From this standpoint, we must develop decisive action against abortion by fighting the causes. We must help families and support single mothers legally and socially, both those who wish to keep their child and those who wish to give their child up for adoption.
Abortion is a hateful act of violence carried out against the unborn and against the mother. The Left should ensure that a woman’s womb is the place that nature intended it to be: the safest place. And society must do this as well, for mothers and children, before and after birth.