Fighting against the bigots threatening abortion rights (Photo: Guy Smallman)
In Abortion—A History, Mary Fissell lays out a vast history of abortion across the world. She goes right back to ancient Greece, when abortion was as common as taking painkillers is now.
It is clear the perception of abortion has been significantly influenced by state-led women’s oppression and by religion, rather than the needs of pregnant people.
The book draws on transcripts and records that have survived for thousands of years. It is a great historical resource into how abortion has been weaponised to control the lives of women.
Fissell outlines that with the introduction of church into lawmaking, there was an increase in the control held over women’s bodies.
Women were demonised for having abortions and people claimed that abortion was a means to cover up illicit sexual behaviour or not conforming to religiously governed expectations.
As laws developed to reduce access to abortion care, there was a clear class divide in accessing care. For better off women, abortion could be accessed through paying the few remaining trained abortion providers a hefty price or travelling to where abortion was legal.
However, for working class women, such avenues were inaccessible, leading them to find alternative, unsafe abortion care.
Fissell mentions how this divide is still reflected in the challenges for pregnant people following the overturning of Roe v Wade in the United States in 2022.
She shows how criminalising abortion does not stop abortions happening, it simply increases the risks.
However, there are aspects that Fissell gets wrong in my view.
As Marxists, we do not believe that patriarchy is the cause of women’s oppression. Fissell does write about class society having a significant impact on the repression of abortion rights. But she appears to put this down to patriarchal leadership rather than the ruling class.
It is evident though that class society has had the biggest impact on women’s reproductive rights.
We learn, unsurprisingly, that black abortion providers were treated more harshly than their white counterparts. Black women were more likely to lose their lives due to abortion complications, as a result of being shut out of safe abortion services within hospitals.
But merely mentioning the facts does nothing for the fight against racism. Fissell doesn’t explicitly call this out as systemic racism.
She also falls short of calling for full decriminalisation of abortion.
With abortion rights being so viciously attacked by right wing forces and the ruling class, it is important to unashamedly demand full decriminalisation of women seeking reproductive care.
Women are subjected to legal investigation following pregnancy loss regardless of the circumstances. This suggests woman cannot be trusted with their own bodies and must be committing a crime if something happens to their pregnancy.
Despite these flaws in the book, I do feel it widens the discussion around decriminalisation and women’s oppression being rooted in the capitalist system and the amalgamation of state and church.
- Abortion—A History by Mary Fissell is out now from Hurst Publishers, £25
