Hundreds of pro-choice demonstrators confronted an anti-abortion "march for life" in San Francisco.

The "Antis" were ecstatic and predicting the overturn of Roe v. Wade with the nomination of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court. Alito refused in his confirmation hearings to say the Roe was settled law. Writing in 1985 as a functionary in the Reagan Justice Department, Alito devised a strategy to undercut Roe. Alito did NOT disavow the memo on this during the hearings.

Promoted to the appeals court a few years later, Alito infamously fought to uphold the Pennsylvania law that would have forced married women who sought abortions to notify their husbands. Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL, gave powerful and moving testimony to the committee about what it meant for her, as a mother of three children, to be forced to ask the husband who had abandoned her for his permission to terminate her pregnancy.

The majority of people in society support the right to abortion. Yet we have are on the verge of this fundamental right being taken away. And this is part of a bigger agenda of Bush and his regime. Secret wiretaps, the breakdown of the separation of church and state, an imperial presidency, endless war in the middle east, the legalization of torture, attacks on science. Millions of people hate all this. The anger is there. But it needs to be mobilized NOW.

The political polarization in this country has to change, and change very quickly. It is not enough to seethe, and it is definitely not enough to just hope that the Democrats will take action, or even to pressure them. Even if you believe in the Democrats, you have to recognize that they will never do anything at all unless and until they fear that you, and people like you, are "getting out of hand." What do the Alito hearings show, if not that?

If we want to turn this around we need to urgently mobilizing others, and commit ourself, to the mass political actions called on the occasion of Bush’s State of the Union address--actions demanding that Bush step down and take his program with him. In the Bay Area convergences are called for 5 pm in Union Suare on January 31. And there will be a national action in DC on Saturday February 4.

For more information see http://www.worldcantwait.org