Wearily, I am dusting down some old files long relegated to ancient history. Can it really be that the case for some basic women's rights has to be made all over again? On abortion, on nurseries and the right to combine work and motherhood, backlash is in the air - some of it from surprising quarters. So old battles need to be fought again, arguments re-made from first principles. Some of this was territory only grudgingly won at the time: old enemies have lurked in the bushes ever since. On abortion, the Catholics and the pro-lifers never went away and now they are joined by evangelicals and Muslims. The far left that once supported women's rights and gay rights now flirts with Muslim fundamentalists instead: Peter Tatchell is the best exposer of such hypocrisy and double-think.  On the right, despite opinion polls' strong support for the 1967 abortion law, their press is filled with juicy anti-abortion horror stories to kindle fear and guilt in every young woman's heart. The Mail and Telegraph have stepped up their campaign of late with a spate of grizzly shockers. New hi-tech pictures of 12 week old foetuses have had the pro-lifers calling for abortion limits at 12 weeks. Lurid but unsubstantiated reports of half-alive aborted foetuses aid their arguments, about the 23-week "foetus" aborted in one room, while a 23-week-old "baby" is saved next door. (Never mind the alarmingly high number of tiny scraps kept alive so young who are severely disabled.)  The real harm done is to vulnerable young girls shocked by these images. With sex education still only a mandatory part of the curriculum as basic science, Britain remains the west European country with the highest teenage pregnancy rate. New Rowntree Foundation research shows the rate of pregnant young girls opting for abortion varies hugely according to social class: nearly 80% of pregnant girls in the highest social classes choose abortion, compared with only 18% among those with low expectations of life.  So David Steel's intervention was a shock, suggesting another cut in his own 1967 abortion law time limit. Originally 28 weeks, it was reduced to 24 weeks in 1990. Now he wants it cut to 22 weeks.  It is not the age of the foetus that counts: it is the right of the mother not to bear an unwanted child. Wait for it, any day now an MP will put up a private member's bill and there will be pressure for the government to give it time.  Cutting the time limit may seem reasonable to some - but consider the desperate late cases: the youngest or most helpless in a state of denial; menopausal women who never realised until too late; or women deserted by partners at the last moment. Whatever the reason, it should be enough that a woman does not want a child. How dare the state force them? How dare anyone judge them? If the debate re-opens, then let's fight back for walk-in clinics for any woman, no questions asked.  So who still thinks this is a post-feminist era? The battles are not won, the revolution is only half-made. Young middle-class high-fliers becoming mothers are often stunned to find that they still can't have it all: it is unbearable to compete with the men's manic working hours. Combining careers and babies is almost as hard as ever. With no collective movement or feminist explanation to hand, they struggle alone. They imagine previous generations must have somehow worried less about their babies, hardened their hearts. The modern post-feminists are, above all, class-blind in their views, knowing little or nothing of what happens in other social classes where matters are far worse. Poor women are obliged to work with terrible arrangements for their children. For them, back to work as soon as their paid leave is over, the tricky choice between nanny, child minder or nursery is something only to dream of.  Women's anxieties are easily stirred, stricken with guilt by any passing piece of research suggesting marginal ill-effects of leaving their children while they work. (Edward Melhuish, co-author of the recent study that caused such a stir, says no harm was found in children as long as they didn't go to nurseries under one year old.) But the backlash against nurseries has only just begun - before they even exist for the great majority of families. As the Tories and their press scratch around for any excuse to cut the expensive Sure Start children's centre programme, expect much more hyping of any research they can find - even if it was done mainly on alarmingly low-quality US nurseries where Workfare has forced poor mothers to dump their babies or starve. Nurseries are - and always will be - a choice: no government in the foreseeable future dare try the cruelty of Workfare compulsion here. With universal Sure Start nurseries now promised, the next step is one year's paid maternity leave and the right for any job to become part-time.  Other threats loom, such as the aggressive fathers' rights movement. Read their house magazine McKenzie to see the depth of their misogyny and desire for revenge against women. They are right that mothers should be forced to comply with access orders. But Michael Howard, grasping at any passing hot cause, wants courts to grant automatic equal rights to fathers. However, children are not chattels: ask King Solomon. Courts must always put the   child's interests first. Until some distant day when fathers do as much childcare as mothers, most children will choose the one who has nurtured them most.  As ever with women's rights, men get their backlash in first. They were slamming doors in women's faces to give them a taste of "women's lib" before women ever gained a shred more equality. Here we go again: you want men to do more childcare? Then give fathers rights before they've earned them. Having followed up some fathers' cases, many of the angriest turn out to be wife-beaters. Few had shown previous interest in childcare, many failed to show up for access visits and other only asserted rights in retaliation for CSA maintenance demands.  These are straws in the wind, but they all need challenging, one by one. There is no woman's movement to pull together these strands, but it is needed as much as ever. The pay gap still yawns too wide for most women to be breadwinners for their families. Domestic violence and the failure of rape cases is only now getting political attention, due to Harriet Harman. Motherhood is only now starting to get the help it needs from the state, thanks to Margaret Hodge. Women make up the great majority of the poor, from motherhood through to old age. So in next week's expected reshuffle, the cabinet had better be filled with women determined to put this right.