Editorials
The longer march The numbers tell a story. The 300,000 marchers in Washington on April 9 ranked with the largest demonstrations in the nation's history-with the 1963 civil rights march and with the...
...That does not free women from moral responsibility for taking a human life...
...Further, as one of the world's major environmental offenders, this country must shoulder a proportionate share of the cost of the sacrifices others are being asked to make for the common good...
...the ship's captain, who left his post and drowned his sorrows...
...In what circumstances did the 53 percent think abortion should be illegal...
...The 300,000 marchers in Washington on April 9 ranked with the largest demonstrations in the nation's history-with the 1963 civil rights march and with the 1971 anti-Vietnam demonstrations...
...Clearly, a majority of Americans do not support abortion on demand...
...Thus his recent declaration that, "I just haven't paid attention to my personal finances" rings hollow, coming from a man who has worked so effectively and avidly to advance his position...
...More than the income of local fisheries, the price of oil and gas, and public support for the new Alaskan pipeline project...
...Read one way, the numbers tell us that a woman's right to abortion can summon as great a political response as securing the civil rights of black citizens or ending a murderous war in Southeast Asia...
...The April 9 march was originally organized to demonstrate on behalf of those causes that had been side-stepped during the Reagan administration and to help revitalize the women's movement...
...and the local government in the town of Valdez, which lulled itself into complacency with the oil companies...
...definite genetic deformity (65 percent...
...Though both groups represent minority positions-as the Boston Globe and other poll data show-each sees the other as the unrepresentative minority...
...Perhaps the April 9 march will have its real impact in what is likely to be a hotly contested fight over the next Supreme Court appointment...
...nearly three-quarters (53 percent plus 19 percent) want at least some restrictions...
...Increasingly it strikes us that changes in the legal status of abortion, even of a fairly restrictive kind, may not greatly reduce the number of abortion "procedures...
...In his position, both the Wright House and the Wright household are ethically and legally subject to public scrutiny...
...Wright with sixty-nine instances of rules violations for accepting gifts and failing to make full financial disclosure, brought the matter to the point of no return...
...Probably harder for Brazilians to swallow is the hypocrisy of our demands: while urging Brazil to go slow on Amazon development, the U.S...
...THE MOTE & THE BEAM Prince William Sound, Alaska, once pristine, is now the color of tea, stained by the largest oil spill in North American history...
...In the contest of numbers, many in the prolife movement would expect to be able to match or exceed those numbers-and perhaps they could...
...Brazil is fostering both by cutting and burning its Amazon rain forest...
...Wright is, to quote his own phrase, "a public man...
...The Court is not likely to be swayed by any of those we have cited, and knowledgeable observers are doubtful that it will take the Missouri case as the opportunity to overthrow Roe, although it may allow some of the provisions of the Missouri law to stand...
...So are most nations...
...systematically destroyed the forests of Vietnam, and, over the past two hundred years, much of ourown forest lands...
...But the debate over the Amazon rain forest reads like the parable of the mote (Brazil) and the beam (the U.S...
...And this is where the debate over a legislative compromise seems to us to become all-important...
...They also tell us that among all the causes that have benefited from the movement for women's rights-equal pay for equal work, day care, equal opportunities in education, training, and career advancement-abortion still has the greatest drawing power...
...Defensive Brazilians remind us of our own sins: the U.S...
...But gross negligence (mismanagement, poor regulation, bad policy, basic blunders, or human fumbles-pick at least one) led Exxon's newest and largest oil tanker to the reef that tore open its hull and then to the oil's hazardous sprawl...
...The U.S...
...Wright's honor.aker and Mrs...
...Now, millions of barrels of oil cover hundreds of square miles of water and shoreline...
...for example, the one that requires the physician to test for fetal viability if the woman appears to be twenty or more weeks pregnant...
...In what circumstances did the 53 percent think abortion should be legal...
...Abortion should not be *J choice any woman feels compelled to make...
...incest (83 percent...
...Wright will now defend himself before the committee...
...We do not knowall-of the conditions that would foster an opposite choice in each and every case...
...must act far more vigorously than it is on a wide range of environmental problems if it is to be taken seriously in the international discussions...
...Neither the staunch-est prolife nor the most committed prochoice activists are likely to rest quietly with the compromise of deeply held moral views, one in which the life of an unborn child is held supreme and one in which a woman's right to decide whether or not to bear that life is held supreme...
...The ten-month, $1.5 million investigation by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct has clearly provided that opportunity...
...If the charges of impropriety stand up in a full hearing, the Democrats must move quickly and decisively to take the speaker at his word...
...Wright told reporters that if his colleagues had lost faith in him, he would not want to stay on as speaker...
...But in the international debate the environmental depredation caused by any single incident matters rather less than the politics of the developed world, with its limitless passion for growth, urging caution and prudence on the less developed...
...Great numbers of women, often with good reason, do not trust men or the society to help them care for themselves or their children...
...He repeated that offer to the full Democratic caucus the day after the ethics committe had announced its findings...
...Even now, while preaching the perils of global warming through the greenhouse effect, the U.S...
...when a pregnancy endangers the emotional health of the mother (64 percent...
...saving the life of the mother (86 percent...
...It is sobering that a woman's freedom to choose abortion has become the symbol, and for many the substance, of women's freedom in general, a proxy issue that engenders greater support than other measures that would address more basic problems and disabilities of women: the right to shelter, for one...
...The speaker is innocent until proven otherwise...
...in addition, divorce reform and restriction, adequate child support from both parents (even if they were never married), direct government grants for children...
...But numbers don't tell the whole story...
...Who is responsible...
...The Valdez incident could not raise the question more strongly: Is the United States as concerned about the environment as we imply when we preach environmental-ism and conservationism to other nations...
...But compromise is not the final prize in what is finally a national tragedy, 1.5 million abortions a year...
...Exxon, which owns the ship and hired the crew...
...The real meaning of the unprecedented numbers in the April 9 march is the extent to which the social bonds between men and women, between individuals and the society have been so attenuated that the social and psychological bond between mother and unborn child has been sundered...
...But whatever their attitudes and circumstances, their behavior and responsibility do not free the rest of us-women and men-from our responsibility for the pressures in our society that make the abortion decision economically or socially compelling and for the moral/cultural dis-bonding that renders abortion morally inconsequential to so many women and men...
...The number of marchers greatly exceeded even the organizers' expectations...
...But even if the Court were directly swayed by public opinion, then neither those who defend Roe as it stands nor those who want it wholly erased would be likely to win in this fearsome contest...
...Rape (86 percent...
...allows developers to cut down our forests in Maine and the Pacific Northwest...
...Visceral reactions and the temptation to sloganeering and simplifying can overwhelm the serious debate that must "come, especially if the effect of limiting Roe is to place critical elements of control back with the states where the opinions of the 53 percent are likely to carry weight for a compromise in state legislatures...
...In most circumstances when birth would result in a social hardship, ranging from 50 percent when the mother is a minor to 83 percent when the father refuses to help raise the child...
...He has the right to a fair and thorough hearing on the charges of financial impropriety that have been associated with his name over the last year...
...The environment" has become an international political issue...
...potential genetic deformity (52 percent...
...or when the mother wants an abortion and the father doesn't (72 percent) and vice versa (75 percent...
...government's endless footdrag-ging on measures to control the pollutants that create acid rain only reenforce the Brazilians' fear that they are being asked to pay the price for our heedless development...
...Oral arguments in the case were heard on April 26 and the decision will come at the end of the Court's term in June...
...That means writing off a portion of Brazil's foreign debt and conditioning new loan packages on the acceptance of measures that will foster environmentally sound development...
...But if not this time or the next, the Court is eventually likely to place some limits on Roe...
...19 percent in no circumstances, and the majority, 53 percent, only in certain circumstances...
...Alyeska, the consortium responsible for piping the oil to the region...
...Politically, it hardly matters that the ecological damage caused by the Valdez spill (or any oil spill) weighs in lighter on the ecological disaster scale than the destruction of Brazil's rain forest...
...It is to be commended...
...These cannot constitute a moral quid pro quo justifying a post-/?oe compromise on abortion...
...The impact of the Valdez oil spill is being closely watched by officials in Brazil, who have been besieged in recent months by international media-led by our own-pointing fingers at another environmental problem: atmospheric pollution and damage to the ozone layer...
...In a poll conducted shortly before the march and published in the Boston Globe (March 31), 25 percent of the respondents thought abortion acceptable in all circumstances...
...He is the most powerful leader in the Democratic party and second in line to succeed the president...
...Legalized deforestation of U.S...
...Ninety-three percent of the respondents thought that the abortion of a fetus who was not of the desired sex should also be illegal...
...CAESAR & HIS WIFE Speaker of the House Jim Wright's problems are not his and his wife's alone...
...The speaker could be reprimanded, censured, or even expelled...
...as a means of birth control (89 percent...
...land and the U.S...
...When the Supreme Court agreed to hear Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (a case involving a Missouri law that placed certain restrictions on abortion) and the Bush administration invited the Court to use this as an opportunity for overthrowing Roe v. Wade, the organizers refocused the march on defending the right to abortion...
...How perverse this seems amid the growing consciousness of the precarious condition of "Mother" earth and the increasing sensitivity to the sacredness of all life...
...The accident could have been prevented or, after it occurred, the damage readily contained...
...But without them, we doubt that even compromise strongly favoring life will make a real-life difference...
...But all of those items on the original agenda of the April 9 march are a beginning...
...But the committee's unanimous vote on April 17, including all six Democratic members, charging Mr...
...Tens or hundreds of thousands of animals, birds, and fish have died...
...contributes three times as muoh carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through automobile exhaust as Brazil does through its forest fires...
...are sinning against the environment...
...So far, the ethics committee has performed its task thoroughly and avoided the pitfalls of partisanship...
...physical health of the mother (81 percent...
...But more is at stake than the ecology of Prince William Sound...
...Wright's honor...
...Both Brazil and the U.S...
...Congress has other, more important issues to deal with than protecting Speaker and Mrs...
...and then, greater workplace support of a "mommy" and "daddy" track and a consistent social commitment to family life...
...Ultimately, it will take much more to save the earth than simply putting our money where our mouth is, but that is the obvious place to start...
...Some of them do so with remorse and regret and for grave reasons, some of them with callousness and indifference for reasons that are trivial, and some of them from ignorance of what is at stake...
...Freedom for women and justice for families will not be achieved until we pursue them with at least as much passion as prolife and prochoice marchers have invested in their campaigns...
...The proposals Brazil's President Jose Sarney made in April-to ban deforestation for agriculture and cattle, and to control the sale of mercury from gold prospecting-rwould at least begin to limit future damage...
...If it still concludes, however, that he has violated House rules, the matter must go to the full House...
...The struggle over abortion is moral and cultural, social and economic, at least as much as it is legal...
...Now the finger wagging has been turned on us...
...In March, an unctuous Mr...
...How ecological damage occurs, how often, and how that damage is managed all reflect on our credibility in the effort to protect the environment...
...That damage is real and stopping it is urgent...
Vol. 116 • May 1989 • No. 9
