25¢ No. 481 ,t~)X.521 7 July 1989 Mobilize Labor, Minorities to Defend Women's Rights! Supreme Court Ruling Threatens Abortion Threatening women's fundamental right to iIi& }'''','ki''' ." " .., abortion, the U.S. Supreme Court July 3 restored a reactionary Missouri law forbidding use of public WOMEN'S LIBERATION funding or facilities to perform abortions. Although .. t.lil'ou,s*" ~..1@1>'~'" of several state laws being appealed the Missouri case presented the narrowest conflict with Roe v. SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONI Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, this decision marks a watershed. For 5X[. months, "pro-choice" defenders of abortion and "pro-life" bigots have faced off at clinic doors around the country. Now the previously dead­ locked court has thrown the door open for anti­ woman reactionaries to restrict abortion rights in every way. The high court has agreed to hear three more abortion cases in October-practically beg­ ging for that "perfect" case'to criminalize women and doctors for ending unwanted pregnancies. In an eloquent dissent, Justice Harry Blackmun, who authored Roe v. Wade, declared: "For today, at least, the law of abortion stands undis­ turbed. For today, the women of this Nation still retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the continued on page 5 Spartacist contingent in New York abortion rights march, April 1988. ' • I I aelsm With an onslaught of racist rulings quist "said he personally would have that have undercut the ability of blacks preferred to mark the anniversary of the and other minorities to challenge dis­ Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798," which crimination through the courts, the outlawed speaking out against the gov­ bigots of the U.S. Supreme Court are ernment (and were finally struck down carving the "Reagan legacy" into the as unconstitutional in 1964). legal system with a vengeance. The 1980 The response of liberals to the all­ Republican platform had declared it a sided attacks on black rights is to call on top priority to pack the courts with the Democratic-controlled Congress, right-wing ideologues who would "re­ especially Ted Kennedy, to reverse them spect Jraditional family values" and through legislation. Newsday (14 June) undo liberal decisions of the '60s and wrote, "For four decades, the Court has '70s. And over .the next eight years, the been the bulwark of civil rights sanity in Reaganites did just that, appointing this racially polarized society. Now nearly half of all federal appeals court Congress must be persuaded to accept justices, three of the nine Supreme the charge." The liberal myth that an Court justices (Scalia, Kennedy and "activist court" would right the wrongs O'Connor) and promoting Nixon ap­ of society is long gone. But the Demo­ pointee William Rehnquist to Chief crats have turned their' backs on any Justice. By gutting even minimal hin­ defense of black rights, in their pursuit drances on the "free market" system of Amid barrage of reactionary decisions, Rehnquist court rolls back "affir· of the racist vote. And the "5th man" of wage-slavery, these black-robed arbiters mative action" measures for blacks and other minorities. the Supreme Court majority is JFK's of capitalist justice yearn to return to the wonder boy Byron "Whizzer" White. "original intent" of the slaveholders' lawyers onto the workers who wen:n't country." Th~ blatantly racist character Within the framework of racist capital­ Constitution. hired, to show that it wasn't just of the Court's "colorblind" decisions ism, any legal gains are easily reversible In a triple whammy of chilling deci­ good business to discriminate. The reflects a social climate in which Jesse if their "social cost" to the capitalists is sions last month, the Court ruled that now-familiar 5-4 majority also upheld Helms is in the "mainstream," where too high. white men claiming "reverse discrimi­ confiscation of suspects' assets and skinheads spread racist terror in the nation" can sue at any time against property before trial (under the sinister streets while KKKers like David Duke Supreme Court: Racist I affirmative action programs; that black RICO act), to prevent them from hiring are elected to office. Drug czar William Discrimination "Inevitable" women fighting discriminatory demo­ "high-priced lawyers." And most recent­ Bennett recently opined that beheading Segregated company housing, segre­ tions, on the other hand, were "too late" ly they ruled that states can execute chil­ drug dealers was "morally plausible," gated dining halls, racial labels for because they had to sue before they were dren and the mentally retarded (even and the Supreme Court would prob­ job categories, lower pay and .even demoted; and that massive statistical South Africa doesn't hang kids)! ably agree, given their position that inferior food for nonwhite workers, dis­ evidence of discrimination in hiring The intent behind the wholesale gut­ . executing children is neither "cruel" nor crimination in hiring and promotion­ didn't matter, that minority workers ting of civil rights and affirmative action "unusual." In fact, the Wall Street Jour­ these are the working conditions for had to show which policy produced it, legislation is, as Justice Kennedy stated, nal (29 June) reported that at a 1987 Asian, Filipino and Aleutian workers and the burden of proof was shifted to bring the laws into conformity with party celebrating the 198th anniversary at the Wards Cove and Castle & Cook from businesses with their armies of the "prevailing sense of justice in this of the Bill of Rights, Chief Justice Rehn- continued on page 10 Cl. .arti!Mao Defeo§e u..« £o...... ittee CLASS-STRUGGLE DEFENSE NOTES Stop Expulsions, of Turks Over 50,000 of from Bulgaria! Bulgaria's , ,.,1:)[;, Turkish Fo~'W~~past two months the Bulgar­ Turkish names removed from tomb­ minority, fleeing ian Stalinist regime has been expelling stones. According to refugees, Turkish persecution by its furkH;h minority. Each day over a boys are examined to see if they were Sofia Stalinist thousand, of these refugees, who are circumcised.! regime, take refuge in Turkey. native Bulgarians, have been forced out National antagonisms, fueled by of their own country. Some cross the "market socialism" under its various border pushing carts piled high with names, have deeply threatened the clothes. Many leave in cars and trucks bureaucratically degenerated and de­ stuffed with personal belongings. Each formed workers states, much to the glee day the border checkpoint at Kapi­ of world imperialism. In the Soviet kule, Turkey is choked with new­ Union, Armenians fight Azerbaijanis comers. Some are forced to spend days and U zbeks unleash pogroms against waiting at tent cities set up at border Turkic Meskhetians forcibly trans­ turmoil. So they violate everything that cibly expel thousands into the hands of crossings. ferred from Georgia in the I 940s; Lenin stood for on the national ques­ the reactionary Ozal government-jail­ Bulgaria's mass expulsions are the Romania deports Hungarians; con­ tion, de~poiling all norms of prole­ ers and torturers of Communist Party culmination of a failed five-year cam­ tending Serbian and Albanian nation­ tarian internationalism, and expelling leaders Kutlu and Sargin, butchers of paign of forced assimilation. Beginning alisms threaten to tear Yugoslavia thousands to a Turkey which was never the town of Fatsa and of countless in 1984 Turkish-language schools and apart. The Bulgarian Stalinists may their home, and whose jails are filled Kurds. The moral authority among the newspapers were shut down, mosques foolishly believe that by expelling the with leftists and workers imprisoned international working class won by closed except for religious holidays, and Turks now they can pre-empt similar after the 1980 NATO-supported mili- Lenin's Bolsheviks was vital to defend tary coup. ' the young workers state from the The Partisan Defense Committee sent assaults of world imperialism. Decades a protest letter to the Bulgarian embas­ of Stalinist betrayals have imperiled Commemorating the sy, demanding an end to the expUlsions the defense of Bulgaria and all the de­ and brutal oppression of Bulgaria's formed workers states from capitalist French Revolution Turkish popUlation, stating: counterrevolution." July 14 marks the 200th anniversary of "Russia's October Revolution, led by the fall of the Bastille fortress-prison, Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevik party, * * * which was the opening shot ofthe French was a beacon and inspiration to the On May 3 the Louisiana Pardon Revolution, the greatest of the bourgeois­ world's working people. The Bolshe­ Board accepted Gary Tyler's applica­ democratic revolutions. Reporting on an viks won the allegiance of the Turkic­ tionfora hearing. Tyler, 29, has spent 15 1845 celebration of the founding of the speaking nationalities of Central Asia years in a Southern prison hellhole, con­ French Republic of 1792, the young by demonstrating the superiority of the victed in a racist frame-up so blatant Friedrich Engels noted that the French Soviet system in practice-at the same that a federal appeals panel declared the TROTSKY Revolution had inspired the international LENIN time respecting the cultural differences trial unfair. Yet this country's racist rul,. communist movement, which alone could of the many nationalities brutally ers are refusing to let Gary Tyler, this make the principles of "liberty, equality and fraternity" a reality throughout the oppressed in the tsarist prison house of victim of racist injustice,