Editorials

...trying to apply tradition (this time called precedent) to current reality was the Supreme Court's ruling on the Hyde Amendment...

...But only a natural gift could explain how superb an editor he proved to be...

...The Carter affirmative decision places the issue squarely in the lap of Congress...

...It cannot be that because government may not prohibit the use of contraceptives, or prevent parents from sending their child to a private school, government, therefore, has an affirmative constitutional obligation to ensure that all persons have the financial resources to obtain contraceptives or send their children to private schools...

...Roe v. Wade offered a construction of the right of privacy that was vague and sweeping...

...The fact that a statute "happens to coincide or harmonize with the tenets of some or all religions," wrote the Court, does not mean it violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment...

...Its starting point is a society uncertain about fundamental values and troubled by the power of medical technology to prolong life even when such prolongation is of doubtful value or causes increased suffering and sacrifice...

...Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted in May to reject the shipment of the uranium...

...As a recent study pointed out, the projected enormous expansion of nuclear power plants in the industrialized and developing countries in the next twenty years will result in a dramatic, unavoidable increase in available supplies of bomb-grade nuclear material...

...LOSING A HATURAL' No doubt Daniel Murtaugh's years of teaching English literature prepared him for his part-time editorial position at Commonweal...

...Intelligence experts believe that in five years such nations as Taiwan, South Korea, Pakistan, South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina will join the six or seven existing members of the nuclear arms club...

...That the Judaeo-Christian religions oppose stealing does not mean that a state or the federal government may not, consistent with the establishment clause, enact laws prohibiting larceny...

...But one can sympathize with the view of the dissenting justices that in a larger sense the new decision, as Thurgood Marshall wrote, "marks a retreat from Roe v. Wade...

...Unlike the dissenting justices, however, we feel that such a retreat is exactly what is called for, and it is only a shame that it awaited a case involving the wishes of poor women...

...In a unanimous decision, the five-man U.S...

...If we were asked to decide, however, we know what we would do: cut off the uranium shipment to India...

...Such decisions are entrusted under the Constitution to Congress, not the courts...

...A similar rationale was given last January for the decision to provide military aid to Pakistan despite that country's apparent attempt to build a nuclear device...

...Unfortunately, Judge Dooling's doubtful conclusion that the Hyde Amendment somehow infringed the free exercise clause of the First Amendment did not get treated so directly: the Court dismissed this argument on the grounds that none of plaintiffs demonstrated that such a free-exercise-of-religion issue had ever been, or ever might be, a factor in their seeking an abortion under Medicaid, and therefore they lacked standing to raise such a question...

...His judgments of a manuscript's strengths and weaknesses were inevitably precise and / August 1980: 421 constructive in a way that usually requires long practice...

...Special Representative for Nonproliferation Matters...

...It is also an apt phrase for two statements recently issued by official bodies in the Roman Catholic church...

...It does .not distinguish the rights and obligations mat pertain, especially in case of conflict, to different actors—to the dying individual, to the family, to the representative pf an incompetent or unconscious patient, to die physician, to the legal institutions, and to the society...

...It reduced the state's interest in potential human life to such a subordinate place that one can well understand the dissenting justices' surprise that the latest decision should let so much tum on this point...

...Truly the United States seems caught between a rock and a hard place...

...The bishops have not hesitated to stick with the traditional position in recently directing Catholic hospitals not to allow sterilization even for the most serious medical reasons—when a future pregnancy would endanger the woman's life, for instance, or would result in a genetically crippled child...

...If we give in to the demands of India— which has already exploded one nuclear device and refuses international inspection—how can we possibly persuade other nations to accept our safeguards...

...We're counting on frequent lunches—and perhaps on passing him a few of the tougher manuscripts...

...There the House and Senate have sixty days in which they can adopt a resolution blocking the sale...

...On the face of it, the case against sending more uranium fuel to India would seem very clear...

...As traditionally taught, the individual has a right to refuse "extraordinary" means of medical care, though the Declaration acknowledges the difficulty of interpreting this term in view of rapid developments in medical practice...

...That act forbids the sale of American nuclear fuel and equipment to nations such as India that refuse to accept international safeguards on their nuclear power facilities...

...In case...

...can not afford, a serious dispute with the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi...

...In any case, last month Daniel Murtaugh embarked on a new career in a sleek corporate headquarters, luckily only a few blocks from our own rather Dickensian offices...

...What the Declaration reasserts in the face of such questions is a tradition that is firm in its principles yet recognizes complexity and respects individual circumstances...

...Since then, Indian authorities have declined to accept the safeguards provided for in the law...

...The Court also affirmed, as had Judge Dooling, the point argued extensively in these pages: that the Hyde Amendment did not constitute an establishment of religion...

...Finally, Roe v. Wade was a drastic judicial circumvention of legislative decision making, whereas the latest decision returns to a traditional hesitance to overrule Congress...

...In the final analysis, it pertains to the conscience either of the sick person, or of those qualified to speak in the sick person' s name, or of the doctors, to decide...

...officials then took steps to tighten export policy toward India and other potential nuclear powers, and in 1978 Congress passed the Nonproliferation Act...

...Unlike the Declaration on Euthanasia it promises to reduce rather than increase respect for traditional teaching...

...Do individuals have "the right to an 'easy death,' which would shorten suffering and which seems to them more in harmony with human dignity...

...But it may not serve the purposes of pro-life advocates either, assuming that simply working a hardship on poor wpmen is not one of them...

...A number of authors and all of Commonweal"% readers are in his debt...

...Both statements can properly be labeled traditional...

...Its rigidity is that which overCommonweql: 420 takes traditional Catholic moral teaching almost solely in the area of sex...

...In tone, substance, and likely consequences, the two statements offer a study in contrast...

...Suffering may have a special Christian meaning, but heroism can be no general rule...

...In May of 1974 Indira Gandhi's government detonated what it called a peaceful nuclear device...

...Opponents of the Carter decision are said to have a good chance of countermanding his order in the House, less so in the Senate...

...In the wake of the Soviet drive into Afghanistan and the continued turbulence in Iran and the entire Middle East, the administration reasoning goes, the U.S...

...The Court's other arguments rested on a sharp distinction between the legally coercive prohibition of abortion by the state and the potentially economically coercive refusal of payment for abortion...

...Given these facts, the U.S...

...EDGES OF LIFE, 2 Another example of...

...that the amendment's ban on Medicaid payments for abortion was a case of unconstitutional unequal treatment...

...The final judgment must take into consideration ' 'the type of treatment to be used, its degree of complexity or risk, its cost and the possibilities of using it, and comparing these elements with the result that can be expected, taking into account the state of the sick person and his or her physical and moral resources...

...In insisting on this rigid regulation, the bishops' directive ignores the positions argued by a number of respected Catholic moral theologians and hews to an earlier statement from the Sacred Congregation in Rome...

...Nonetheless, in a general way it restates a moral teaching that responds sensitively to very real problems...

...It is puzzling that while many non-religious ethicists have come to admire the wisdom of the church's traditional teaching in this area, many American bishops seem to favor the convergent views of right-to-life amateurs and medical activists over their own time-tested tradition...

...As a piece of social legislation, the Hyde Amendment has troubling aspects...

...The Declaration on Euthanasia is a welcome document...

...if shipments are cut off, India would feel free to extract plutonium from the two hundred and fifty tons of uranium we have already given them and use the material to make scores of additional bombs...

...We sympathize, then, with the members of Congress who have to make this hard decision...

...What the decision means is that Mr...

...Carter has decided to favor improved political relations with New Delhi over his commitment to curbing the spread of nuclear technology and materials...

...The Declaration does not speak to a number of the difficult moral and legal issues surrounding the care of the dying...

...Conference of Catholic Bishops...

...These arguments do establish a certain line of consistency with the Court's 1973 protection of abortion in Roe v. Wade...

...it was issued by the U.S...

...The debate will be complicated, because even some who oppose nuclear proliferation are nonetheless in favor of supplying India with the uranium, including such highly respected figures as Ambassador Gerard Smith, U.S...

...EDGES OF LIFE, 1 Ethics at the Edges of Life is the apt title of a book by Paul Ramsey...

...government in 1963 helped to build India's Tarapur nuclear reactor north of Bombay and agreed to provide the Indian government with fuel for it for thirty years...

...is trying to persuade its nuclear customers to open nuclear facilities to international inspection, and we are trying to get European suppliers to follow our example...

...Despite the heated warnings of its opponents, it has not led to widespread resort to illegal abortion and consequent injury and death...

...Prior to that, the U.S...

...All this demands further discussion...

...uranium but from plutonium derived from a Canadian-built research reactor, albeit one that used American heavy water...

...Where the directive rejects the views of these moral theologians is also where it departs from the Declaration on Euthanasia: in a concern for "totality," for the overall welfare, dignity, and rights of the human person caught in anguishing circumstances...

...India insists that the U.S...

...Whether freedom of choice that is constitutionally protected warrants federal subsidization is a question for Congress to answer, not a matter of constitutional entitlement...

...is obligated to continue supplying fuel for its Tarapur reactor under the thirty-year terms of our / August 1980: 419 1963 agreement...

...But there the resemblance ends...

...Painkillers are a prudent recourse even when they may reduce consciousness or possibly shorten life...

...It will create bureaucratic problems for Catholic hospitals, but for most Catholics it will only add to the church's unfortunate loss of credibility in all matters of sexual morals...

...As long as there was this plausible connection, in the matter of payments (as distinct from the matter of outright prohibition) the legislature was free to balance as it saw fit the state's interest in potential life with the woman's interest in privacy or health...

...In previously declaring a "fundamental liberty" of a woman to a private reproductive decision, the Court insisted that it had only ruled out the former kind of government action.'' Although the liberty protected by the due process clause affords protection against unwarranted government interference with freedom of choice in the context of certain personal decisions, it does not confer an entitlement to such funds as may be necessary to realize all the advantages of that freedom...

...The Court overturned the ruling of District Judge John F. Dooling Jr...

...But President Carter has decided to provide India with the desired fuel despite the Indian government's refusal to provide any assurance that it will halt nuclear tests...

...Nothing in the due process clause supports such an extraordinary result...

...The other was a brief directive to Catholic hospitals on the question of sterilization...

...Such a viewpoint "would require Congress to subsidize the medically necessary abortion of an indigent woman even if Congress had not enacted a Medicaid program to subsidize other medically necessary services...

...It is nor the mission of this Court of any other to decide whether the balance of competing interests reflected in the Hyde Amendment is wise social policy...

...To hold otherwise would mark a drastic change in our understanding of the Constitution...

...Other experts believe that by 1990 Egypt, Libya, Iran, and Iraq could acquire the means to make nuclear weapons...

...One was the "Declaration on Euthanasia" drawn up by the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith...

...Precisely because it is nuanced, this teaching promises to be a much stronger bulwark against the pressures for active euthanasia or "rational suicide'' than do the views of some pro-life militants whose concern about the slippery slope of "quality-of-life" judgments leads them, in effect, to endorse the medical technologist's drive to prolong life at any cost...

...The nuclear device exploded by India, they say, was not made from U.S...

...We do not envy them their task...

...Behind such efforts is the realization that the number of nations that could acquire the ability to build atomic weapons is steadily growing...

...That fact will soon be amply illustrated in the congressional debate over whether the United States should send thirty-eight tons of enriched uranium fuel to India...

...Catholic couples facing such terrible dangers cannot rely upon natural family planning, they are reminded that they can "forego the genital expression of their love," a solution apparently more in keeping with natural law than sterilization...

...But as for the specifically constitutional aspects of the Amendment, it seems that the Court, in being less faithful to Roe v. Wade, has in fact been more faithful to the Constitution...

...One of the frustrations of operating, as Commonweal does, under a financial Damocles sword is our inability to open a full-time position for such a "find...

...As for the singling out of abortion among all medically necessary services for a ban on payments, the Court argued that this was "rationally related to a legitimate governmental objective"—namely, the state's "important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life...

...Commonweal: 422...

...God is sovereign over life;'' no one may dispose of it at will.'' Suicide and "mercy killing""" are prohibited...

...Safeguards are essential...

...This national decision comes at a time when the United States is making every effort to extend curbs on technology and materials that could be used to make nuclear weapons, and the administration has for months been twisting European arms for that purpose...

...Members of the commission said their ruling was based on the fact that granting a license to export the uranium would be a direct violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 1978...