\Even as gay and lesbian people continue to battle for our fundamental civil rights, it is important to remember that there is another group of Americans whose rights to privacy and self-determination are also being covertly deteriorated by the right wing. That group is women. Women's reproductive freedom has come increasingly under attack during the Bush Administration, and access to safe and legal abortion has effectively vanished in many areas of the country.
Anti-choice organizations, bolstered by their friends in Congress and the White House, have launched an organized, well-funded attack on women's rights. Last October, George W. Bush signed the abortion procedures ban into law—the first federal abortion ban enacted since Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973. Then, the Senate voted 61-38 in favor of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA), a radical measure that seeks to confer legal rights to unborn fetuses during the earliest stages of pregnancy.
While the anti-choice network scrambles to roll back the clock on abortion rights, feminists across the country are raising their voices, and on Sunday, April 25, tens of thousands of people will take to the streets in Washington, D.C., for the March for Women's Lives to demand full equality for women. The pro-choice community wants to send a clear message that women will not quietly relinquish hard-won rights to control their bodies and live their lives as they see fit. When you look at the struggle for reproductive freedom in those terms, it sounds remarkably like the struggle for marriage equality—a similarity which should not be surprising when you consider how intertwined the feminist and the LGBT movements have been historically. In fact, when the LGBT movement was first gaining momentum in the 1970s, it was typically feminist organizations that offered support and resources.
To this day, many feminist organizations continue to keep LGBT rights at the top of their lists of key issues. In fact, the National Organization for Women (NOW) recently passed a resolution that candidates who do not support the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) cannot receive a NOW endorsement—a position not even taken by some LGBT groups.
As the battle for marriage equality takes new turns almost daily, LGBT activists are expending significant energy fighting for their own lives, which raises the question—'should we divert our activist efforts from LGBT issues to work for choice?' The answer is not only should we, but we must join feminists in their struggle for reproductive freedom because now, more than ever, we are fighting a common enemy. Tim McFeeley, Executive Director of the Center for Policy Alternatives, crystallized this commonality, explaining that, 'the same people who force women to have back-alley abortions are the same people who force gay people to stay in the closet.'
The war against social injustice cannot be won if we are fighting on different battlefields, working for one issue at a time. If we hope to be successful, we need to stand together and insist that a violation of one group's civil rights is an attack on all of us.
Add your name to the fight by joining the thousands of feminist and LGBT activists who will be marching in D.C. on April 25 for what is sure to be a historic moment in the struggle for real equality and civil rights. Many groups are organizing buses from Chicago to D.C. for the march, and space is still available. See www.marchforwomen.org .
Streit, business manager of Windy City Media Group, is on the board of Chicago NOW.
