New York – Feminist Betty Friedan believes that the feminist movement is suffering from paralysis. In a recent New York Times Magazine article excerpted in the Toronto Star (November 7, 1985), she demanded a re-commitment to the original aims.
Among the ten focal points of the movement’s “second stage” – Friedman calls it – are pornography and abortion. Feminists, she says should stop worrying about pornography because to oppose pornography is to play into the hands of “the far right.” Feminists should also stop being “so traumatized by the fundamentalist crusade against abortion” and re-affirm a woman’s right to choose [to kill.]
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Nicaragua – During the last two weeks of November 1985, the daily newspaper Barricada, organ of the ruling Sandinista dictatorship, opened a campaign for abortion on demand, supported by the government-approved National Women’s Association. The latter has also been demanding universal sex education and contraception.
Currently, to be legal, “an abortion must have the consent of the child’s father or, in his absence, the woman’s nearest relative,” reported the Globe and Mail of November 30, 1985. The abortion must also be approved by a doctor’s committee of three, who must judge it “therapeutically” necessary. This law is now denounced by pro-abortionists. Ms. Maria Bolanos, legal advisor to the Women’s Association described it “as denying women’s right to control their bodies.”
The abortion-on-demand campaign is clearly a government-orchestrated effort, following the same pattern as elsewhere: a medical report is produced concerning abortion statistics; claims are put forward about casualties from backstreet abortion; the Catholic Church is held responsible for backward views.
In Nicaragua there is no danger, of being contradicted by non-government spokesmen. The government has complete control over radio, TV and the press.
Peking – In China, one in three pregnancies are aborted. While officials strongly deny that any of the nine million abortions are done under duress, independent reports have confirmed again and again that detailed government supervision and coercion make the Chinese abortion programme the world’s most complete application of state totalitarianism to health matters.