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The basis for the argument for demands being made around the issue of sexuality seems to be that 'the coonomic implications of unwanted pregnancy flow from our sexuality'. Therefore the demand for the right to freely express our sexuality is behind the demand for abortion and therefore we should include demands about sexuality in the campaign.
We disagree with this. The economic and political needs of capitalism lead to support for the family unit. Many things support the retention of the family - the economic ramifications such as the appalling financial position of single parents, the lack of nursery schools, the lack of part-time jobs, etc, the lack of adequate contraception, right to abortion; the weight of family ideology. From these flow women's sexuality monogamous, sex after marriage for childbearing only....
Certainly the fight for abortion is part of the fight for sexual freedom, but it is just as much a fight of importance to women who do conform to bourgeois standards of morality, who sce the need for abortion as primarily a need for efficient means of family planning. They also demand the control their OWn fertility. It is not necessary to have broken with a bourgeois conception of morality, as this paper implies, to see the need for the right to abortion. The need to control one's own fertility is one of the preconditions necessary to being able to explore sexual relationships freely, it is not the result of this.
Just as we have encouraged people to be involved in the campaign who do not oppose the Government's cuts, we also encourage people to be involved who have not begun to think about what "selfdetermined sexuality" means. Of course we discuss these issues and hope to persuade all the people involved in the campaign to see the need to fight on all these points, but we should not make this one of the main slogans or demands of the campaign and therefore the basis of participation in it. Our support comes from wider numbers of people than those who support all the demands of the women's movement. It seems rather bizarre to expect so much on these questions and yet to rebuke NAC for not supporting ALRA's Bill with its upper limit of 24 weeks — a decision that was taken on the basis that we were not prepared to compromise on a woman's right to choose.
Of course it would be good if we could involve more women from the WLM in NAC. If we have failed to do this it is because we, as socialists, have failed to get across to women in the movement the need for us as feminists to struggle against state oppression in order to achieve OUr liberation. The authors of the paper admit that the right to freely determined sexuality would be a difficult demand to organise around but say, 'surely all women can identify with a campaign based around that demand.
When the vast majority of women still hope to marry and have a permanent,
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monogamous relationship we would query that this is the case. Even when women do identify with this issue it is still difficult to involve them in a campaign on it. If we look at the campaigns around the sixth demand of the women's movement, we see that they have been against particular repressive moves, e.g. the sacking of Louise Boychuk for wearing a *Lesbians Ignite' badge, or the Gay News trial, rather than around the demand generally.
It is claimed that the fault' for the issue of sexuality not being emphasised enough lies with the domination of women from left groups who are economistic and do not have a feminist perspective. We have explained why we do not think that demands around sexuality should be made part of the basis of the campaign. This is not because we are not feminists but because we think it will limit the number of women who will become involved. Women from the IMG are feminists in thinking that women's liberation is crucial in appropriate for the occasion.
The authors suggest that we should investigate using our ability to perform abortions clandestinely as a threat against the state'. We think this would be a move in completely the wrong direction. NAC is a campaign for abortion to be done legally and on the NHS. How could doing illegal abortion outside the NHS possibly aid the campaign? We are demanding that the state provides the best facilities for women — not allowing them to avoid this.
In Italy, where CISA has set up centres to do abortions, the Government has turned a blind eye and allowed them to continue, whilst at the same time rejecting a Bill in Parliament to legalise abortion. When the Seveso disaster happened 1976, the pregnant women affected by the contamination either came to England for abortions or were encouraged by the Government to go to CISA. In this way the Government avoided taking any responsibility at all. It was certainly not threatened by clandestine abortions. Of course there is a problem for needing immediate treatment, but in England, where medical treatment is supposed to be available on the NHS, it is not for NAC to that the women's movement becomes involved in illegal abortions.
Finally, we think it a very good idea that people with similar views on any particular issue should meet together before NAC conferences, National Planning Meetings, etc. This would aid and clarify discussion so that our limited time on these occasions could be put to the best possible use. We hope that this would be around a positive position, not simply on the basis of being JUDITH ARKWRIGHT & SARAH HART (both in SW London NAC and the