In case you needed one last reason to turn your back on the Democrats, the Party's senate leadership is about to provide one. Senate hearings over John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court begin in early September. But already the discussion has shift

Bush's nomination of hard-line conservative John Roberts to the Supreme Court represents a real threat to the rights of women, workers, and people of color.

Sexism is deeply embedded in military culture. Military life demands unquestioning obedience to superior officers who are overwhelmingly men, which reinforces time and time again the inferior place of women. Male soldiers are exposed to and become part of a way of life that constantly sexualizes and devalues women. It is an extreme, concentrated expression of the sexism underlying capitalist society generally.

Even though less than one third of voters actually turned out for Bush last November, the Democratic Party has taken his victory as a sign that America in general is moving to the right. To match this perceived shift, leading Democrats are arguing that their party needs to attract conservative voters by shifting to the right on "moral" issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, and religion.

The religious right has declared war on women and our reproductive rights. With Bush reelected, the Republicans' grip on Congress strengthened, and same-sex marriage bans passed in 11 states, the November election has emboldened the religious right, which is demanding paybacks for getting out the evangelical vote.

In September, Socialist Alternative sponsored a nation-wide speaking tour by Elin Gauffin, a Swedish socialist-feminist activist.

Many people know that we still have a long way to go to achieve workplace equality in the U.S. But what many do not realize is that the problem is getting worse, not better.

"There's nothing wrong with me the way I am. However, when I look in the mirror I see a FAT girl named Jennifer. Not ever good enough or right enough or pretty enough." (www.eating.ucdavis.edu) That's how one anorexia victim described herself.

The March for Women's Lives in D.C. on April 25 of this year was the largest public demonstration in American history, with over 1,150,000 people in attendance (according to the official crowd count by organizers). Women of all ages from all over the country attended; families came with as many as four generations marching together. For many young women, it was the first demonstration they had attended, and the energy and determination displayed was impressive.

The women's liberation movement of the '60s and '70s succeeded in altering many laws and social attitudes related to women's rights. But by failing to replace capitalism with socialism, corporate bosses are able to super-exploit women as a second-class section of the workforce, while continuing to profit from women's unpaid labor in the home that reproduces the next generation of exploitable workers.

Ramy Khalil's article on abortion summarizing the wave of feminism in the '60s and '70s captures the excitement of the movements of my youth. I benefited from the gains the movement brought, such as the availability of the pill and abortion, which were legalized just as I graduated from high school. Because I could control my reproduction, I got an education, developed a career, and did things that I would have never done had I bore children as a young woman. I feel gratitude to the women and men, socialists and others, who forged these changes.

The women's liberation movement of the 1960s and '70s reached its peak when women won the right to choose an abortion and the Supreme Court legalized the procedure in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case. Women made the right to abortion a central demand of their movement because they understood that women could never be equal with men without control over their reproductive lives.

With George W. Bush in the White House, women's right to choose is under severe attack. Never has it been clearer that we need to take urgent action to defend our hard won rights. The leaders of the main feminist organizations, such as NOW and NARAL, continually hammer home one central message this presidential election year - women must vote for "anybody but Bush." But can we really rely on Democratic politicians to protect our rights? What is the Democrats' actual record on abortion?

"We would not have succeeded in our mission if we found that, after we set up a new government in Iraq, women in any way are not allowed to participate fully in the society with the same rights as anyone else," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell recently declared.