The U.S. already has the highest maternal death rate among wealthy nations, and pregnant Black women already die at twice the national rate—and three times more that the rate of white women. Since Dobbs, states with abortion bans have experienced a mass exodus of OB-GYNs, resulting in “maternity care deserts”—with no available prenatal care in one-third of U.S. counties. Roughly 100 hospitals have shut down their maternity care departments.
As such, imperialist feminism has reared its ugly head once again. Imperialist feminists have been around as long as imperialism itself—rooting for their own ruling class’s military escapades while repeating the jingoistic phrases used to justify any given war.
So far in 2023, state lawmakers have introduced a record-breaking least 483 anti-trans bills. Put differently, only four states have not done so. These include banning parents from allowing their teens to attend drag shows, barring insurance companies from covering gender-affirming medical care (already in use for several decades), and even making it illegal for parents and medical providers to dispense gender affirming care to minors.
As in the United States, access to abortion is difficult, even prohibited—not only in Poland, but also in Romania and Hungary. These countries bordering Ukraine host several hundred thousand Ukrainian war refugees on their soil, who sometimes have no choice but to have an abortion in another country.
War has returned to Europe, which means that rape as a weapon of war has also returned to Europe. Unwanted pregnancies from these rapes are happening today, right here in Europe.
This interview with Ana Cristina González Vélez, one of Colombia’s leading campaigners for abortion rights, describes how the movement in Colombia advanced the struggle to win decriminalization of abortion in February.
Those who suffer the most from all these abortion restrictions are young and poor. The parental consent requirement puts the fate of pregnant teens in the hands of a parent who may be abusive, unsympathetic to their plight, or simply reactionary.
Just as US corporate news media “discovered” Afghan women’s rights only when the US was angling for invasion, their since-forgotten interest returned with a vengeance as US troops exited the country.
Marx’s and Engels’s articulations of women’s oppression often contain contradictory components—in some respects fundamentally challenging the gender status quo while in other respects merely reflecting it.
European Marxists from Germany to Russia were often at the forefront of the fight for women’s liberation, while advancing Marxist theory on what was then called “the woman question.”
