Marxists hate womens right to choose : Melbourne Indymedia

Then there's the two male authoritarian death cults constant desire to keep uppity women in their proper place as we see most vididly today in Latin America...Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, abortion is legal only in
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guyana.

Abortion is illegal in Chile. Those undergoing the procedure can be
penalized with three to five years in jail; those performing it, 15
months to five years. An estimated 160,000 abortions are performed
every year there, and nearly 10 percent of women involved die of
complications, according to Chile's Health and Sexual and
Reproductive Rights Network.
Government officials have said that decriminalizing abortion is not
on the agenda. "We are not going to do absolutely anything in this
area, which is not part of our governing program," said Health
Minister María Barría, according to the December 17 New York Times.
When asked why, Barría replied, "We are in a coalition." She was
referring to the governing alliance made up of Bachelet's Socialist
Party and the Christian Democrats.
In November, Chile's National Congress voted 61-21 not to discuss a
bill that would have allowed abortions when the pregnancy put a
woman's life at risk or in cases of rape.
Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, abortion is legal only in
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guyana.

And when Venezuela’s leftist populist President Hugo Chavez cited Jesus Christ repeatedly in his election victory speech, he joined a growing number of Latin American politicians who are embracing authoritarian religion—or at least pretending to do so.

Are they sincere or are we seeing an epidemic of religious populism? even, gasp! - ' liberation theology?'

Many analysts see a growing political manipulation of religious fervor in the region, alongside a greater Catholic church influence in state affairs. Some fear that, much as in other parts of the world, religion will soon be used to fuel domestic and even regional confrontations.

Before we look into whether such fears are justified, let’s look at the facts. Chavez, who has often lashed out against Venezuela’s church hierarchy for allegedly siding with the country’s oligarchy, and who has been quoted by biographer Agustin Blanco Munoz as having said that he wasn’t “Christian or Catholic,” spent part of his victory speech talking about Jesus Christ.

“The Kingdom of Christ is the kingdom of love, of peace, the kingdom of justice, of solidarity, brotherhood, the kingdom of Marxism,” Chavez said. “This is the kingdom of the future of Venezuela.”

Weeks earlier, Nicaragua’s leftist president-elect Daniel Ortega had won his country’s November 5 election by dropping his earlier 'socialist' rhetoric and running as a religious Catholic. He recently married his longtime companion in church - supported a church-backed law banning therapeutic abortions - and staged photo opportunities in various religious settings.

In Ecuador conservative banana industry magnate Alvaro Noboa recently rose from almost nowhere in the polls to win the first-round presidential election by running as El mensajero de Dios (God’s messenger).
He was later defeated in a November 26 runoff vote by leftist populist Rafael Correa, who in the final stretch of the campaign presented himself as a fervent Catholic.
In Argentina, a just-retired Catholic bishop in Misiones province drew national attention last month by winning a local election that marked the first political defeat of President Nestor Kirchner.

In few countries is the authoritarian Catholic Church pushing its weight more visibly than in Nicaragua.
Roman Catholic Cardinal Miguel Obando threw his backing behind his once archrival Ortega during the recent electoral campaign, and Ortega has reciprocated by backing the Church-supported abortion law.

“There is an all-out alliance between Ortega and Obando,” Sergio Ramirez, the leftist Nicaraguan vice president during Ortega’s regime in the 1980s, told me recently. “What we’re seeing in Nicaragua is a permanent intromission of the Church in state affairs.”

In addition, the authoritarian Catholic Church has become a much more active player in Argentina since that country’s 2001 economic crash, and barely a day goes by in Mexico without headlines quoting Cardinal Norberto Rivera’s statements on almost every political or social issue.

A Latinobarometro poll conducted in 17 Latin American countries last year revealed that the Catholic Church is by far the most respected institution in the region: 71 percent of Latin Americans said they trust the Church. By comparison, 43 percent said they trust their president, 42 percent trust the armed forces, 38 percent trust the private sector, 28 percent trust Congress and only 18 percent trust political parties.

Among the countries where this Church enjoys the greatest support are Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay and Panama, with more than 80 percent trust levels, Venezuela (74 percent), Colombia (75 percent) and Ecuador (77 percent).
Church actions aside, much of Latin America’s current religious fervor may have to do with the growing disenchantment with Peronist style politics.

“People need to cling to some emotional element, and this emotional element had long been supplied by ideologies,” says Marcos Aguinis, one of Latin America’s most talented writers and religion analysts and a psychiatrist by training.
“The collapse of ideologies such as Leninism has left a vacuum, and has led people to seek other things to which to cling with passion, such as religions.”

You do not win a major prize for your predictions that capitalism will no longer develop the productive forces, and that the only alternative is authoritarian-socialism or barbarism, if capitalism subsequently not only expands phenomenally, but invades new areas in a quite spectacular way, improving in the process the living standard of countless millions of people. It was this failure of prediction that destroyed Marxism-Leninisms chance of defeating feudal opressive reactionary and grossly sexist religion.