Mifepristone, one of the most common abortifacients in the country, and one accepted as safe and effective not only by the FDA but by a consensus of experts and doctors, was first approved for use over twenty years ago, in 2000. As right-fascist reaction against women’s and LGBT civil rights surges through the country, old political “gentlemen’s agreements” between the right and left wing of U.S. fascism, represented by the decaying Republican and Democratic parties, have begun to collapse. The long-standing agreement between the left and right wings of fascism concerning mifepristone is the latest victim of the growing disharmony within the U.S. ruling class and among its lackeys.

The pendulum of U.S. fascism has never been stable. Since this country’s founding, the balance between the more and less reactionary ruling classes has been achieved through civil wars, terror campaigns against the colonized peoples, periodic economic crises, and occasional concessions to the struggling masses. Ours is a reactionary period. Over the last few decades, the pendulum has been spinning increasingly off-balance. Since the rise of the neoliberal reaction (the so-called “third way”) in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the actual effect of the Democratic Party’s policies has been to act as a stabilizer, allowing the increasingly vicious agenda of the GOP and the right wing of reaction to progress in four- and eight-year strides, broken by four- and eight-year Democratic “reprieves.” One administration at a time, the GOP has been steadily chopping away at the progress made by the working classes and their allies over the course of the 20th century. The Trump presidency, rather than an aberration, was a normal continuation of this process, and the wave of Trumpite reaction that followed in his wake has thrown this teetering system into ever-greater disarray as the right becomes increasingly hostile to the old left-fascist consensus.

In the debate over abortion there are two major camps within the ruling class. On one side stand the left fascists, who are joined by ruling class interests like drug giant Pfizer. They currently hold tenuous control over the U.S. Empire’s government apparatus. On the other side are open social reactionaries, the most vicious of capitalism’s domestic faces, who have been planting ever-broader roots among the most violently reactionary segments of the population. The right-fascist crusade against women’s and LGBT civil rights is a positional war against rival factions of the U.S. ruling classes — the monopoly capitalists. This latest play over mifepristone is yet another step in the right-fascists’ Napoleonic conquest of this country’s halls of power — the courts, the legislatures, and the executives — from the state to the federal level. This vile strain of U.S. fascism will not stop until it has reshaped this settler-colonial empire in its own white supremacist image. 

The mifepristone ruling itself and the legal doctrine behind it are little more than arcane legal trickery — a game for the capitalists’ competing teams of lawyers. Going back to the year 2000, before the 2008 crisis and the accelerating decomposition of the capitalist world-system that we see today, there was substantially more agreement between the political wings of the ruling-class duopoly. The initial approval of mifepristone was made by the FDA using a subsection of its regulatory powers, “Subpart H,” reserved for the speedy approval of drugs designed to treat “serious or life-threatening illnesses.” In other words, Subpart H was essentially designed for the rapid approval and deployment of drugs that had undergone extensive testing, were proven safe and accepted as such by an expert consensus, and were urgently needed to mitigate public health emergencies.

No one cared, in 2000, that the FDA used this particular subsection to approve mifepristone, as it’s done with thousands of other safe and effective medicines. Like every legal controversy that arises within the U.S. legal system, this didn’t matter until someone with capital and political influence decided to make it matter. Twenty-three years later, the breakdown of this tacit compact leaves the right of millions of people to access yet another means of safe abortion, yet another basic and essential reproductive medicine, at the mercy of one unelected judge in Texas. 

Kacsmaryk’s ruling is not the last word in the matter. For one thing, it was a temporary order at an early stage in the litigation over this ludicrous technical detail in the FDA’s approval process. The final decision as to whether the FDA overstepped its bounds (and do we believe that’s the real issue the right fascists are complaining about? A minute detail about regulatory choices?) will only come at the end of lengthy and expensive litigation — terminating, in all likelihood, at the Supreme Court. Should the ominously-named Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine win its challenge, it would not only threaten the bodily autonomy of millions of people across the U.S. Empire, but would also condemn thousands, if not millions, to ineffective and dangerous “alternative medicine” treatments for unwanted pregnancies, miscarriages, and other gynecological problems.

Late last Wednesday night, the Federal Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit (covering the Federal Districts of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi) struck down portions of Kacsmaryk’s punitive ruling. Tellingly, other portions were left standing. Although mifepristone will still be available, all expansions of the FDA’s approval — including its 2016 decision to allow non-M.D. mifepristone prescriptions and its 2021 ruling to permit mail-order prescriptions, both to ease barriers to access — were rolled back to foresee the outcome of the Texas legal battle. Last Friday, Justice Samuel Alito blocked the remainder of the ruling, preventing it from going into effect until 11:59 p.m. EST, Wednesday, April 19. This is to give the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine time to file their responses (which are due noon EST Tuesday) and for Kacsmaryk to read it before he issues yet more sweeping anti-mifepristone rulings.

This is exactly the kind of response from Democratic left fascists — our so-called “progressives” in government — that we should expect. Mifepristone will continue to be available — to bourgeois, ruling-class women. But this medicine, like so much healthcare in the U.S. Empire, will be denied to the toiling millions who cannot afford to visit the doctor, who have no insurance, who cannot go to the drug store where it is dispensed. To our capitalist rulers, these millions are merely pawns on a political chessboard.

Should we expect the Democrats to fight this latest ruling? Yes — but only because the enormous weight of the drug companies is behind them. But the fact is that the left wing of the ruling class has repeatedly exposed itself as feckless, aloof to the machinations of its right-wing rivals, and impotent. Yes, they will fight, but never to win. The tide of reaction is rising; we must prepare for its advent — not by voting for the Democrats, not by attempting to change the dictatorship of the capitalists for the better, but by building working-class power where we stand. There is no relief coming from the criminally useless left wing of Capital. If relief comes from anywhere, it will be from us, the working classes, the hundreds of millions whose labor keeps this country running, whose exploitation makes the capitalists rich, and from our organized class action.

A few weeks before the 2022 midterm elections, President Biden promised that, if the Democrats maintained and expanded their majorities in both houses of Congress, he would push for legislation to enshrine the right to abortion in law.

In a speech to the Democratic National Committee on October 18, Biden stated his belief that “the [Supreme] Court got Roe right 50 years ago, and I believe that Congress should codify Roe [as law] once and for all.” The president also promised to veto any legislation that would restrict abortion rights in the event of a Republican midterm elections victory and Republican majorities in Congress.

Biden was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision this year in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which, by a 5–4 majority, it overturned the Court’s previous 1973 decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, which found a “constitutional” right to abortion. The Court’s decision in Dobbs eliminated the only federal legal protection of the right to abortion. As a result, several Republican Party-controlled state governments have passed legislation banning and criminalizing abortion at the state level. Most of these states have also made it a crime to travel to an adjacent state for the purpose of seeking an abortion.

In the same speech, Biden claimed, “Right now, we’re short a handful of votes” to pass legislation protecting abortion rights.

So, the president went on, “If you care about the right to choose, then you gotta vote. That’s why, in these midterm elections, it’s so critical to elect more [Democrats] to the U.S. Senate and more Democrats to keep control of the House of Representatives. And, folks, if we do that, here’s the promise I make to you and the American people: The first bill that I will send to the Congress will be to codify Roe v. Wade.”

President Biden made the extraordinary claim that, even with majorities in both houses of Congress, and the presidency — in other words, full control of the federal government — the Democrats were incapable of passing a law to protect the right to abortion and other reproductive rights.

In fact, the president’s claim was an outright lie!

The Democrats have held their current majorities in Congress and the presidency for two years; thus, the Democrats have had two years to pass legislation protecting the right to abortion and other reproductive rights. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was handed down on June 24 of this year; thus, the Democrats have had almost five months to pass legislation protecting the civil rights that the Court eliminated. Even with the midterms behind us, the Democrats still have the power to pass any legislation whatsoever — right now. In fact, the new members of Congress will not be sworn in until January 2023, which means that the Democrats will remain in full control of the federal government for nearly two months.

When the Democrats throw their hands up and say, as Biden said, that they’re “short on votes,” the truth is that they are shamelessly lying to you. The truth is not that they can’t, but that they won’t.

But, why? The Democrats claim to be the party of reproductive rights, and the party of progressive civil rights in general. That’s how they’ve distinguished themselves from the GOP. If they can protect reproductive rights — if they can do so right now — then why won’t they?

It all comes down to the Democratic Party’s classic, tried-and-true electoral strategy: “carrot and stick.”

In the run-up to every election cycle, the Democrats dangle a “carrot” in front of certain sections of the U.S. electorate — in front of women, in front of LGBT people, in front of Black and other racially oppressed people, in front of disabled people, in front of migrants, in front of the working classes and the poor, and so on. The Democrats promise, “If you vote for us, we’ll protect your civil, political, and basic human rights. But you have to vote,” they insist, turning and pointing at the “stick” we know as the GOP, “or else your rights will be taken away.”

This election cycle was no different. For the Democrats, centering abortion rights in the midterm elections was a tactical move.

With the U.S. economy hurtling into another crisis and recession, and with inflation skyrocketing, many political commentators predicted that the GOP would sweep the midterm elections. But it seems that mainstream opinion underestimated the significance of reproductive rights and other civil rights, such as marriage equality, that are now threatened by an increasingly extreme-right GOP and a right-fascist Supreme Court. The consensus among mainstream political analysts is now that the issue of abortion rights played a singularly important role in the midterm elections, and that this single issue decided, in favor of the Democrats, many of this election cycle’s most hotly contested races.

Aside from the elections, ballot measures in several states concerned abortion. In every case, pro-choice proposals triumphed and anti-choice proposals were defeated.

Ballot measures enshrining the “right to reproductive freedom” in state constitutions were passed by majorities of voters in California (by 67%), Michigan (by 57%), and Vermont (by 77%). Conversely, a ballot measure in Kentucky, regarded as a thoroughly “red” state, would have amended that state’s constitution to stipulate that there is no right to an abortion. This backwards proposal was rejected by 52% of voters in Kentucky. A similar, but more convoluted, measure in Montana, which would have criminalized a wide range of abortion-inducing medical procedures, was rejected by 53% of voters in that state.

Clearly, the majority of U.S. citizens, even in many “red” states, support, in general, the right to abortion.

The Democrats understood this, and so, in standard Democrat fashion, they made the right to abortion the cornerstone of their midterm elections campaigns, with a few exceptions, across the country. In their messaging, the Democrats resorted to their tried-and-true “carrot and stick” strategy — making empty promises to pass legislation after the midterm elections, if the results were favorable, yet refusing to take action now, while they actually can. 

Now the 2022 midterm elections are mostly over, and the results, although incomplete, are clear: The Democrats no longer control Congress. The Republicans won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, while the Democrats maintained a similarly narrow majority in the Senate.

What does this mean for Biden’s earlier promise to “codify Roe” in law?

At the president’s press conference on Monday, November 14, a reporter asked Biden, “What should Americans expect from Congress as it relates to abortion rights,” given the results of the midterm elections.

Biden replied, “I don’t think they can expect much of anything, other than we’re going to maintain our positions.” When further pressed, he added, “I don’t think there’s enough votes [in Congress] to codify [Roe], unless something happens unusual in the House [of Representatives]. I think we’re going to get very close in the House, but I don’t — I think it’s going to be very close, but I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

For two years (correctly speaking, for several decades) the Democrats have held hostage the right to abortion. This week, Biden made clear that his party won’t be giving up that valuable bargaining chip anytime soon — at the very least, not until the conclusion of the next election cycle, two years from now.

As we’ve said, the Democrats still have the power to pass legislation right now. In fact, the Democrats are currently in the process of passing legislation protecting the right to gay marriage in law. But they won’t do the same for reproductive rights.

Evidently, Biden’s plan is to keep the “carrot and stick” of reproductive rights available for use in 2024, when he’ll most likely face Donald Trump in another presidential election. We can be sure that the Democrats will yet again present themselves as the “party of women’s rights” in 2024. Until then, millions of women and transgender people will continue to needlessly suffer under a regime that cruelly denies us basic rights to essential, life-saving healthcare, and criminalizes us for seeking it.