Women’s Liberation Follow

Thanks to Gordon Brown’s pandering to the bigots inside his own cabinet, Labour MPs had a free vote on anti-abortion amendments put to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in parliament this week.

Key amendments to the government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill – which include the biggest attacks on abortion rights for 18 years – were being debated as Socialist Worker went to press.

Abortion rights in Britain are facing a serious attack over the next week and we have to defend them.

Build the lobby of parliament, 5.30pm, Tuesday 20 May, Old Palace Yard, opposite St Stephens Entrance to the House of Commons, London (Westminster tube)If your MP is holding a surgery this weekend organise a lobby of it to demand they attend the debate and vote to defend abortion rightsTrade unionists can insist on a pro-choice vote from union-sponsored MPsWrite or phone your MP to demand they defend a woman’s right to chooseOrganise an emergency meeting in your workplace or college to raise awareness of the vote and to build the lobbyHold Abortion Rights stalls in city centres and at workplacesLeaflet your workplace, hall of r

Trade union women in Scotland are at the forefront of campaigning for a woman’s right to choose.

The efforts to reduce the upper limit for an abortion from 24 to 20 weeks have focused, in part, on the possibility of the foetus feeling pain after 20 weeks.

On Tuesday 20 May the first vote on abortion law in 18 years will take place in the House of Commons. Anti abortionists are using the Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill to table amendments that attack a woman’s right to choose – including cutting the legal time limit for abortion, imposing a compulsory "cooling off" period and counselling for women seeking abortion and removing the right of women who are carrying a foetus with severe disabilities to have access to abortion.

A major debate on abortion will take place in the House of Commons on Monday 12 May, writes Farah Reza. Amendments to the government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill will seek to limit women’s access to abortion and MPs have been given a free vote on them.

Members of Abortion Rights attended the group's extraordinary general meeting in central London on Saturday of last week to discuss the campaign's strategy.

Deborah Cameron is a professor of language and communication at Oxford university.

The success of the Russian Revolution of 1917 enabled the radical ideas on women's liberation that had been germinating in pre-revolutionary times to develop, and be widely discussed and materially embodied in the real world.

By the late 1970s the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) was in decline on both sides of the Atlantic.