On Jan. 22, 1973, years of agitation paid off for women as safe, affordable access to abortion was legalized through the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Millions of women had previously depended on unsafe back-alley abortions and risked death for the most basic human right — to control her body. Thirty-one years later, the right wing in this country has taken back much of what the Roe decision guaranteed for women. And this process (state-by-state, procedure-by-procedure restrictions) has been paralleled by an ideological war against women’s rights, from access to a safe abortion to decreasing wages for women.

To understand the pathetic state of reproductive rights, one needs to look back to how abortion rights were won to begin with. In the late 1960s, inspired by the civil rights movement and its victories, the women’s liberation movement grew rapidly. At the center of this movement was the demand for a woman’s right to choose — in addition to equal pay and childcare. In 1970 California became the first state to legalize abortion — under the governorship of none other than Ronald Reagan. And just three years later, under the presidency of anti-abortion bigot, Nixon — the Supreme Court (packed with conservatives) ruled that women should have the right to abort unwanted pregnancies. Not the church, not a judge, not her family … herself!

Almost immediately following the decision, conservatives began organizing for its demise. Illinois Republican Henry Hyde knew that the only way to defeat the Roe decision would be to chip away at it with one piece of legislation at a time. And that’s just what they did. Beginning with Hyde’s own attack on poor women: 1976’s Hyde Amendment banned federal Medicaid funding for abortions. A month later, a Texas Medicaid recipient, Rosie Jimenez, bled to death from a back-alley abortion.

One procedure at a time, under both Democrats and Republicans, access to abortion has reached frighteningly low levels. Today, only 15 states provide abortion access for low-income women. In 90 percent of counties across the nation abortion isn’t provided at all. A woman from western Nebraska faces an eight-hour drive east or west to gain access to safe abortion procedures. If she shows up in Omaha she faces a 24-hour waiting period, and if she goes to Denver and is under 18 she needs parental consent.

The latest attacks are attempts to ban third-term abortions — misnamed by the Right as ‘partial birth abortions.’ Republicans do not bear all the responsibility for these attacks. 74 democrats voted in favor of criminalizing the procedure as well. And we can’t tell how senators John Kerry and John Edwards would have voted: both were no-shows.

Thanks to recent court rulings, these bans were ruled unconstitutional because they do not allow for exceptions when a woman’s life is at risk. What does it mean when a woman’s right to choose is upheld only when her right to live is threatened? We can turn the tide, but only if we abandon the current strategies of the pro-choice movement.

On April 25 of this year, over a million took to the streets in Washington, D.C., for the March for Women’s Lives. The crowd exploded in applause for actress Cybill Shepherd’s impassioned, non-compromising calls for free abortion on demand, free birth control, and free morning-after pills. The contradiction is that the same crowd cheered for Hillary Clinton’s claim that we didn’t need to protest for eight years. Clinton was clearly alluding to the eight years of her husband’s term as president. The problem with this is that Bill Clinton actually opened the door for Bush’s current all-out assault on abortion rights.

In 1992, Clinton campaigned promising the “Freedom of Choice Act.” After his inauguration, he never uttered the words again. Federal funding for abortions decreased, and the percentage of American counties providing abortion procedures fell to 10 during Clinton’s tenure.

The moral of this story: we cannot trust the Democrats. While John Kerry panders to the right proclaiming his personal pro-life position, we need to rebuild the movement that won women abortion rights to begin with. Without apologies or concessions, we need to rebuild a movement that takes to the streets — not the ballot box.

Christopher Dols, a member of the International Socialist Organization, is a senior majoring in civil engineering.