The Role of Racism in Civil Rights

Ann Menasche, a civil rights attorney, discusses the legal complaint she lodged against Disability Rights California earlier this year in response to her being fired from her job of twenty years. Her employer, Disability Rights California, issued a statement in May 2022 that opposed the reversal of Roe vs. Wade while also erasing females completely from the picture by replacing the word “women” in the context of pregnancy and abortion, with “people.” Menasche responded to this listserv statement writing: “So glad DRC came up with a statement in defense of Roe! Thank you! Access to safe, legal abortion is a life and death necessity for women as a biological sex across the board, regardless of race, economic class, gender identity, sexual orientation (even lesbians can be raped) or anything else, and an absolute prerequisite for equal female participation in our society. Of course, the most vulnerable females, especially poor women, women of color, women with disabilities, young girls, unhoused women and girls, women and girls in prison, etc. will suffer the most under draconian anti-abortion laws. Wealthy white women have often managed to get abortions, even before Roe. As a veteran of the feminist struggle for abortion rights that preceded Roe, I never thought it would come to this. Yet, it is good to remember that women won this right primarily through grassroots organizing and peaceful mass protests in the streets, and that is the way we are going to protect it. Thanks again, DRC, for taking a stand!” Menasche lost her employment for this statement and details the entire political wave of wokery within her sector and the fear driving the neoliberal managerial class that makes women participants in the erasure of their own sex class.