MBED

Elsewhere several anti-abortion demonstrators who attacked a clinic in Fairfax, Virginia were acquitted on all charges, and abortion rights activists responded by filing a lawsuit against the demonstrators, their lawyers and several county law officials. Their brief targets the anti-abortion demonstrators' illegal actions as well as "the complicity and acquiescence of state prosecutorial officials in permitting and encouraging the illegal interference" with the constitutional right to abortion.

Since the February 10 trial in Fairfax, in which the judge ruled as unconstitutional the section of Virginia law permitting abortions, anti-abortion forces have been distributing leaflets which tell women entering the clinic that they are violating the law. They make no mention of the superceding federal ruling which permits abortion. Local police are now refusing to respond to calls from women at the center who have asked them to stop "Right to Life" from harassing women at the center.

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a police investigation of a firebombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic over a year ago has yet to produce any results. Women who go there are still met by anti-abortion forces who maintain a daily 8 hour picket outside the clinic.

ips Organize to of Choice Ohio

Helen Mulholland, State RCAR Coordinator, was named interim coordinator of FREEDOM OF CHOICE OHIO. Interim Secretary-Treasurer is JoAnne Cicerello, Coordinator of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Ohio.

For more information, please contact Jackie Pappalardo, Preterm, 368-1006.

PROTECT A WOMAN'S

RIGHT

CHOOSE

NOW, gentlemen-I THINK WE'RE ALL in FUNDAMENTAL AGREEMENT ON THIS ABORTION ISSUE.

AKRON CITY COUNCIL

PROTECT WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN AKRON! pegavesių LIBERATION NEWS SERVICE

Akron Ordinance Passes by Default

Akron (LNS) As over three hundred people raised freshly mounted posters aloft and prepared to march to City Hall, the air of Akron University's student lounge was bittersweet with the aroma of magic markers. "Mothers for a free choice," read one poster. "Pregnancy by choice, not by Council," read another. The marchers hit the street.

Part of a "day of outrage" organized by Akron's Pro-Choice coalition, the posters and chants referred to the antiabortion ordinance drawn up for the Akron City Council by attorneys for the so-called Right to Life organization. Right to Life hopes to use the ordinance as a model for other localities. Already Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Oregon and Michigan have expressed interest in testing it.

The February 11 march to City Hall was preceded by a rally dominated by speakers from Ohio NOW, which moved its state meeting to Akron in support of the Pro-Choice Coalition. Religious pro-abortion speakers were also represented, including Helen Mulholland, state coordinator of the Ohio Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, who said, "There are religious bodies in this country who with equal conviction (although not perhaps with equal fervor) do not hold that life begins at conception. They do not hold that at all."'

"They have no right to make us change our Constitution to enforce their ecclesiastical laws for them," said Kathy Helmbock, President of Cincinnati NOW, who brought down the house when she demanded, "If the fetus is a person, why don't they have funerals for miscarriages?" As speaker after speaker opposed the ordinance, the crowd rose repeatedly in angry ovations.

Anti-Catholicism is running high in Akron these days for obvious rasons, but it is not the real issue. Nor, as speaker Ann Saunier (NOW national boardmember who chaired International Women's Year conventions in Ohio and Houston) pointed out, are antiabortionists sincerely interested in the "right to life."

"Where are these people on other life-giving issues like rape, incest, child care and wife beating?" she asked. "At IWY these people came to the mike over and over to speak against those issues. This is not a right-to-life issue. This is an issue of controlling women. Their cause stems, in my view, from a deep hatred of women.

Maryann Baker, president of Ohio NOW, denounced the ordinance as "more cruel and more demeaning and more degrading to women than anything anyone has come up with in a long time." What are some of these degrading provisions of the Akron law? Well, there's "Notice and Consent", for example, which calls for anyone performing an abor-

tion to (a) give 24 hours actual notice to a woman's husband, or, if she is under 18, to one parent or legal guardian; or (b) obtain written consent from a woman's parent or legal guardian if she is under 15.

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Secrecy about the topic of abortion is one big prob. lem in organizing Akron women to fight for their rights. Another is apathy and a general failure to understand the importance of political work. One 1960's Akron feminist, who is sympathetic to the Pro-Choice Coalition, expressed an attitude common in Akron these days when she said, "I feel these are things you work out for yourself, and then go on and live your life. I don't need a cause." Norma Goldberger thinks the lack of small women's groups in Akron, which would help break down the barriers of silence and apathy, is part of the problem. "When I was in Columbus," she said, "there were women's groups throughout the city, and the atmosphere was completely different." Local feminists are beginning a group in the near future.

Unfortunately, Pro-Choice people face other prob. lems as well. The Pro-Choice Coalition has only three members who have done grassroots organizing before, and it's hard to get members out to leaflet, let alone to talk to the community or to demonstrate. Further, Pro-Choice has been unable to win much support from Akron's black community. Although one black Council member has been solidly support. ive, the local Welfare Rights Organization has stayed out of the fight. They're afraid of genocide -that the push for abortion rights is part of a more general attempt on the part of population control interests to limit the population of third world

women.

One question about the Akron situation that has puzzled people a lot is "Why Akron?" A woman carrying a "Mothers for a free choice" poster suggested that "They know what kind of town this is," referring to the loss of radical energy and a union base when many rubber factories closed down recently. Jerry Carr, professor of sociology at Akron University, thinks it was because the Catholic Church in Akron succeeded in stacking the City Council. "All they had to do," he said, "to form a block out of an apparently amorphous voting pattern to quietly pass the word through their churches. Editors' Note: Since the writing of this article, Akron City Council passed the ordinance by a 7 to 6 vote. Despite his careful assurances of support for the Akron Pro-Choice Coalition Mayor Ballard refused to sign the ordinance, which, in effect, allows it to become law without his "official" approval. We can be sure that with this victory under their belts, the Right to Lifers will push onward!

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