OCTOBER, 2022 – On June 24, 2022, in a stunning reminder of the depth of the backlash against women’s rights, the United States Supreme Court officially reversed the historic Roe v. Wade ruling which provided legal protection for abortion rights in that country.[1] Within two weeks of the ruling, some half of all states in the US saw court filings and amended laws challenging the legal status of abortion.[2] There are far-reaching international implications of the US reversal of women’s right to choose, and the Canadian context cannot be assumed to be unaffected.[3] Importantly, in Canada, we have a long history of social movement mobilization to defend abortion rights. Socialist feminists have played a pivotal role in successfully forwarding a reliance on social movement mobilization in the historic campaign for the right to choose.[4]
The above is the first paragraph of “Sexism and the Left: Case Studies in an Epistemology of Ignorance”, co-written with Abigail B. Bakan.[5] The complete text can be found here.
[1] US Supreme Court, “19-1392 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (06/24/2022),” June 24, 2022, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf.
[2] Megan Messerly, “Abortion Laws by State: Legal Status of Abortion Changing Day-by-Day after Roe v. Wade Overturned,” POLITICO, July 6, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/06/abortion-laws-states-roe-overturned-00044127.
[3] Candace Johnson, “Overturning Roe v. Wade Would Have Wide-Reaching Implications beyond U.S. Borders,” The Conversation, May 29, 2022, http://theconversation.com/overturning-roe-v-wade-would-have-wide-reaching-implications-beyond-u-s-borders-183192.
[4] Cherie MacDonald and Carolyn Egan, “Abortion: Women’s Right to Choose,” Marxism 3 (2005): 51–56.
[5] Abigail B. Bakan and Paul Kellogg, “Sexism and the Left: Case Studies in an Epistemology of Ignorance,” Socialist Studies/Études Socialistes 16, no. 1 (October 31, 2022), https://doi.org/10.18740/ss27330.
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