It is clear that one of the bases of George Bush's re-election was his reactionary stand on issues like abortion and gay marriage and the consequent support for him by the Christian evangelical right.
On these issues, as on the war, the response of Kerry and the Democrats was not to put forward a principled opposition but to stay stumm.
With the appointment of several new judge to the Supreme Court likely early in the second term. This is vital because the Supreme Court has so far upheld the principle that American women have the consitutional right to abortion, but over the last decade this principle has only be upheld by the narrowest of margins - 5 votes to 4.
Bush has cited realise that it Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two of the Supeme Court's most virulent opponents of a woman's right to choose, as his model justices - giving an indication of the sort of appointments he will seek to make.
The pro-choice movement in the US will need to prepare to mobilise the sort of demonstration which took place last spring when over one million people marched on April 25 in defence of abortion rights under the banner, march for Women's Lives.
The anti-abortionists in the US have won massive victories at the ideological level in having late terminations referred to both in law and in
common parlance by the gruesome - and entirely inaccurate - name of partial birth abortions. Last October Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion ban which appears to prohibit abortion procedures beyond the eighteenth week of pregnancy, except when woman's life is in danger. Shortly afterwards three federal judges granted temporary injunctions to prevent the law coming into effect This summer full trial hearings took place in three states - New York, Nebraska and California district judges in all three ruled the ban unconstitutional because it failed to provide an The proexception to protect
choice the woman's health,
as required by the movement
Supreme Court. needs to The Bush administration is appealing the California decican only sion - and it is defeat this expected that such
an appeal if successreactionary
ful would have onslaught implications in the through other two states.
The pro-choice
mass movement needs to mobilisation realise that it can
only defeat this reacrather than
tionary onslaught legal action through mass mobilisation rather than legal action as the bedrock of its campaign. Meanwhile, we should expect that the anti-abortion movement here in Britain will gain confidence from Bush's victory and that the likelihood of a private member's bill which seeks to outlaw late abortions is stronger than it was previously.