Correspondence
Correspondence Liberals in the fray Poway, Calif. To the Editors: Mary Meehan's article, "The Other Right-To-Lifers" [Jan. 18] deserves the highest praise. It also deserves to be reprinted...
...When laws are unenforceable, solutions must be sought through other means, particularly through rnoving deeper into understanding of essential causes...
...If we stopped the armaments race and destroyed our stockpiles...
...McGovern, and Rep...
...It's also nice to know that our Catholic intellectuals have been in the forefront of this battle from the very first...
...One must wonder: if a miniscule fraction of the cost, the energy, the dedicated thought,,the organizing which are now spent on opening or closing abortion clinics, on legalistic agenda and drawn swords between promoters and opposers, were to go into child care, health care, provision for decent housing and employment, sex and family life education, help to persons who cannot support their own burdens, feeding those who are hungry whether biologically, mentally, socially or spiritually, would abortion as a major social problem be cut down to size...
...For conscientious believers one disturbing problem is how to decide what courses of action are best taken to affect what they see as a growing evil, alone or in teamwork with others...
...3) It had been the subject of much public complaint...
...Saxtons River, Vt...
...In fact, as Warren showed, it meant both statute and case law...
...Culver, Sen...
...Some of those Ms...
...Yet pronouncements often sound as though abortion were invented by the Supreme Court in recent years...
...They voted in racists, antiminority, pro-excess profits and proPentagdn hacks who were conveniently pro-Hyde amendment...
...Erie was of classic beauty and simplicity...
...Theodore Hesburgh last October summed up the damage being done by one-issue ProLifers: "We have witnessed the fact that political candidates who agree 95 percent with Catholic principles of social justice in most issues of public policy have been defeated by their opposition on this one issue, and have been replaced by candidates who, agreeing superficially on this issue of abortion, disagree with us on almost every other issue bearing on justice and equality...
...Useful guidelines can come from these...
...Meehan's suggestion that liberal politicians need to take another look at the Pro-Life position...
...Justice Story, speaking for the Court in 1842, had claimed that the "laws" there meant only legislated laws, statutes...
...Liberals too.are supposed to be reasonable people...
...There was no strong movement against affluent doctors casually dubbed' 'baby butchers'' nor against nameless practitioners with nostrums and coat hangers who welcomed paying customers in dirty, hidden quarters...
...I echo her fervent hope that "Edward Kennedy, Jerry Brown and Birch Bayh will take another look at abortion...
...A longtime member of peace and human rights organizations and efforts, I am naturally encouraged to consider the possibility of some kind of collaboration with at least a wing of the Pro-Life movement...
...Erie contains vital lessons for pro-life...
...She correctly removes the issue from a conservative constituency into the broader arena that should sponsor this issue...
...The author speaks openly...
...She does not persuade me that the Pro-Lifers have faced up to the evil that they do when they retire from the U.S...
...To the Editors: Mary Meehan's "The Other Right to Lifers" [January 18] is a readable, informative and perceptive examination of people, ideas and facts in the current abortion problem...
...For readers who believe abortion is moral evil, social injustice, potential genocide, it is good to find unexpected allies...
...Story's training should have led him to realize that...
...The Court needs to be shown, through authentic old records, (readily available) that the old abortion laws were in fact intended to protect the baby...
...Apparently the practice of abortion is as old, its patterns and legitimations as varied as those of prostitution...
...Over those years, the old policy had become obviously unreasonable and unpopular...
...but that was really reversed by the Civil War...
...Drinan...
...Notre Dame president Rev...
...But for neither man did the truth prevail...
...Another example of reversal, this time by patient, scholarly work, is provided by the Erie Railroad case of 1938...
...Just a summary of it will make that clear...
...ELBERTR SISSON President, Interfaith Peace Guild Courting the Court Chicago, 111...
...Meehan names are in the unwritten hagiography of our own country, contemporary saints within and without the Catholic church, persons of many persuasions and distinctions...
...They have often brought additional tragic problems into marital relationships...
...MARJORIE MURPHY 14 March 1980: 159...
...Meehan's roster of activists against the arms race, capital punishCommonweal: 158 merit, nukes etc...
...The justices are reasonable men, naturally disposed to listen to reasonable pleas...
...More, they often like to regard themselves as...
...Similarly, Justice Blackmun'sshare of common knowledge should have led him, when he spoke for the Court in 1973, to understand that the old state abortion laws he was about to strike down had been instituted primarily to protect unborn babies and not, as the abortionists argued, the mothers...
...She does not, for one thing, deal with the objection that a Human Life Amendment would be unenforceable, and that such an absolute ban would bring greater evils in its wake than it would cure, much in the fashion of the Prohibition Amendment...
...Her own views are clearly given, without malice or retaliation towards persons who hold otherwise...
...The evidence, clearly visible in the original draft of the Act, was not only reported, but a photostat was offered to dispel any doubt about Warren's interpretation...
...The seeds of Ms...
...More historical knowledge is needed by many of us...
...It is very good to see "liberals, radicals and feminists" enter the fray on behalf of pro-life...
...All evils of society cannot be solved by legislating against them...
...It was (Continued on page 158) Commonweal: 130 (Continued from page 130) an error made back in 1842, in regard to the meaning of the phrase "laws of the several states" occurring in the Judiciary Act of 1789...
...We are few enough, God knows, we who regard the return of the death penalty as a step back to barbarism and who are convinced that we must put an end to war before it puts an end to all life...
...The questions may seem fantasy but we know fundamentally that abortion and other stringent social problems cannot be solved until we achieve tremendous change in total social structure...
...The real moneymakers from women in destitute poverty and from terrified or cynical kids, the networks of subterranean operators who collected the profits, went as unchallenged as now do the hierarchy of bosses in the dope trade who pick up the cash bags from the street pushers...
...For biblical illiterates among us, a far more comprehensive scriptural base is needed, in a historical perspective...
...He warned Catholic church leadership that legalized abortion in some form was on the way and that Catholics must seek to mitigate or diminish the evil coming from this development...
...Nonetheless, I have serious difficulties with Ms...
...Meehan and other liberals and radicals among the Pro-Lifers disapprove of the liberalkilling propensities of the main body of the movement...
...That is a shame...
...In Erie, the Court abandoned a policy that had been adhered to consistently /or 96 years...
...We all know the Dred Scott decision was reversed...
...The decalogue and appeal to abstract tradition are not enough...
...Laws prohibiting divorce in' 'Catholic countries'' have not prevented family break-up, concubinage, child neglect, intramarital injustice...
...The 1979 political adventures directed against congresspersons and local candidates on the single issue of their unwillingness to support an amendment or law against abortion were mischievous...
...If she does not mention liberals who seek to reduce abortion by persuading the Supreme Court justices that their decisions legalizing abortion were wrong, then it must be that there are not in fact many liberals engaged in such efforts...
...As a result of the 1842 error, the Court strayed for many years, and was only finally convinced of the truth by Warren's recovery of old records from the attic and cellar of the Capitol...
...Enormous figures for abortions performed since the Supreme Court ruling are quoted but increase is not known since earlier statistics were for the most part uncounted or erased...
...It also deserves to be reprinted and spread widely throughout the land...
...In some states they ousted able legislators whose records on justice and human well-being had been forcefully demonstrated...
...We need continued theological examination of problems, in addition to other social study of the realities, anthropological (now so popular) and economic...
...And I, for one, tend to regard the aborting of the...
...4) That old policy is now reversed as unconstitutional...
...Senate a friend of peace and human needs like Dick Clark of Iowa and replace him with a friend of the Pentagon and the right wing like Roger Jepsen...
...Her description of several abortion procedures shows plainly the violence inherent, whatever method.is used...
...What petitions one can responsibly sign, what banners one is willing to carry, can become complicated choices, An imminent question which influenced voters in 1979 and is likely to influence 1980 elections, is whether or not a law against abortion (for all or for those who cannot pay the bill) is even a temporary solution to the growing problem...
...What was the historical error...
...unborn in nearly three out of every ten pregnancies as additional evidence that our society may be blindly choosing death, not life...
...REV...
...It is a truism that social democracy will not happen without economic democracy, social justice without economic justice...
...To label men and women who would not endorse a specific proposal "abortionists," as zealots have done, is dishonest or myopic...
...It is indeed deplorable that on the hit list of the Pro-Lifers are such foes of militarism and advocates of social justice and human rights as Sen...
...What of past reversals...
...JOHN DOEBELE Is law the answer...
...Why can't they dig down a little to provide the reasons that will persuade the justices to change their views and their votes...
...Erie ran: 1) The old policy had been based on historical error...
...whose pro-life stance includes protection of fetal life, is encouraging...
...2) The old policy had given rise to many evils...
...A few decades ago when well-heeled women went to Sweden or elsewhere for abortions there was plenty of gossip about it but no movement against it...
...Median's short article might engender a great deal more illumination, from herself and other authors...
...18] of liberal activist pro-lifers seems fairly complete...
...Jesuit Drinan while president of the Boston College Law School, several years before the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, was deeply concerned about "the contemporary assault on the right of the human fetus to be born...
...CHARLES DOLLER The single-issue issue Bryans Road, Md...
...But these two factors alone were not enough for reversal...
...To the Editors: Until I read Mary Meehan's article "The Other Right-toLifers" [Jan...
...Is there hope for increase of dialogue and of popular articles by knowledgeable, responsible writers investigating realities of abortion problems...
...18], the presence of feminists, liberals, radicals and peace people in the Pro-Life ranks was largely a secret from me, just as she suggests it was from almost everyone...
...To judge by recent published pieces on pickpocketing, laws against this ancient employment have had little effect...
...a true model of reversal...
...The conclusion for liberals, and particularly for scholarly liberals, seems clear...
...There had to be a third element, an aggressive individual, who in this case was Charles Warren...
...To the Editors: Mary Meehan's catalog [Jan...
...I concede, of course, that undoubtedly Ms...
...scholarly...
Vol. 107 • March 1980 • No. 5
