Correspondence
WALSH, JOAN DUNN & VAAS, JEAN & RIDDER, KATHLEEN C. & KELLY, TIMOTHY & RYAN, MARY JOHANNA & DiSTEFANO, ANTHONY J. & ULHOLLAND, JOSEPHM & REDMOND, RICHARD F. & DOYLE, KEVIN M.
CORRESPONDENCE 'Strategy Time' & Cuomo letter HUZZAHS & HOOTS FOR THE GOVERNOR AND US A middle ground Brooklyn, N.Y. To the Editors: I am in complete agreement with your editorial, "Strategy...
...If so, what...
...Who will provide food, clothing, shelter, medical care, etc., for a child brought into the world against his/her parents' will...
...Democracy is certainly about individual rights but it is also about the social contract...
...I am delighted that Commonweal and some other thinkers have begun to see the light of day...
...But in any case, the intense concentration of resources each of these hurdles demanded long ago muddied the idyllic picture of the movement you suggest existed until the current emphasis on abortion rights...
...KEVIN M. DOYLE Cuomo 'lucid' Douglaston, N.Y...
...To the Editors: Mario Cuomo's letter on abortion [March 23] disturbed me for two reasons...
...Candidate Cuomo's earlier...
...Why is it that full funding is considered humane when it comes to abortion and death, but...
...promise to protect New Yorkers' "reproductive freedom" (New York Times, October 28, 1982) would lead one to believe he meant merely a potential person...
...4) If it's a woman's choice how her body is to be "used," should we take another look at our prostitution laws...
...To the Editors: I am in complete agreement with your editorial, "Strategy Time III" [February 23...
...Severe genetic disease or deformity...
...To the Editors: I've developed an uncomfortable case of dismay since reading Governor Cuomo's clarion call for "The Decade of the Child" [March 23, p. 198...
...Paul, Minn...
...To the Editors: Some of the crucial questions about abortion are: When does a human life begin...
...Its failure to do so may perhaps be explained by the exclusion of women from the doctrine-making, doctrine-interpreting levels of the church...
...And that is damage only in the political arena...
...A few things make Cuomo's rhetoric of conclusion workable...
...If the church is to be truly persuasive on abortion, it will have to revise its teaching against contraceptives...
...True, Cuomo did rather cryptically concede that "there are differences both in degree and quality between abortion and some of the other religious positions the church takes: abortion is a 'matter of life and death' and degree counts...
...For one example] women are noting a serious inconsistency, not in the principle of the sacredness of human life, but in the way the principle is applied in the two areas of war and abortion...
...Our bishops have not uttered such threats for politicians who disagree with their stands on other issues...
...Increasingly, abortion is tearing that contract apart...
...In Seneca County (population 31,000), one of the most rural counties of the state, we have been administering a teen-age pregnancy program for three years...
...RICHARD F. REDMOND The writer is president of the Finger Lakes Office of Social Ministry.RD F. REDMOND The writer is president of the Finger Lakes Office of Social Ministry...
...I find Commonweal trying to have it both ways: on the one hand using the language of anti-abortion fundamentalists, and on the other calling for dialogue...
...You accuse NOW and NARAL of not supporting legislation that would guarantee real freedom of choice-including the choice to continue a problem pregnancy-but you do not mention that many prolifers don't support family planning, high school health clinics, sex education in the schools, child care, ahigher minimum wage, and many other social programs that could help families...
...To the Editors: Your "Strategy Time III" editorial [February 23] criticizing NOW and NARAL for their strong support of abortion rights suffers a great deal from the hysteria you seek to remove from the abortion debate...
...Eight and one-half months...
...The rhetoric of NARAL and NOW has become more strident because of the Webster decision and unfortunately, politically, it is a means of rousing the troops...
...we surely are fully committed to nurturing, caring, and loving the children left in our charge" can only be read with misgivings and doubt...
...Sex of unborn...
...we do need a strategy...
...This series of editorials was very disappointing to me...
...has an abortion is automatically excommunicated...
...I sure don't any more...
...TIMOTHY KELLY Not-so-consistent ethic Seattle, Wash...
...This single issue threatens to determine who can be elected to public office...
...We have not been successful in obtaining this outside funding at a level which would allow the program to continue-a tragedy for our children and an embarrassment for our state...
...When asked why they won't participate in these legislative efforts, prolifers answer that their political influence is diluted if they become involved in too many issues...
...That, perhaps, should be the starting point for a new strategy...
...Three months...
...Very few polemicists (including NOW types as well as Operation Rescuers) get down to specifics: Rape...
...The basic moral dimension is paramount but, as you point out, is being obscured...
...To the Editors: You have called for a consensus favoring compromise on abortion, and you invite responses...
...How about a Down's Syndrome child...
...You can argue with NOW and NARAL reasonably for their positions and tactics on the...
...This penchant for conclusion in place of explanation goes back to Notre Dame...
...3) Does the performance of 1.5 million abortions annually indicate anything about our culture, other than that many of us do not want to become parents...
...Without reference to polling data or compromise areas of citizen agreement, Cuomo simply deemed the Catholic view as "in the minority" and predicted "Prohibition revisited" in the event of abortion's being re-outlawed...
...Dialogue is an additive, not an answer...
...And would any lives be saved...
...Yet, I am forever struck by the fact that the church lobbies harder on issues affecting women-abortion and contraceptives-than it does on other sections of the "seamless garment...
...Down here, execution is all the rage...
...Maybe this lawyer's days are more easily spoiled because my clients are all under capital sentence...
...In 1988, the first year of the program, funding from the New York State Department of Social Services was $50,000...
...sixty-one people were served...
...The strength of Governor Cuomo's letter is his apparent recognition that there are limitations in both the prolife and pro-choice positions...
...Still, a 1985 Commonweal interview would suggest Cuomo meant an actual person...
...Year two (1989) the funding was reduced to $37,000 as originally planned, before we became aware of the tremendous workload that was to be discovered...
...Even the sunniest day can be marred by a newspaper's, or radio show's, casual and approving allusion to the state's needless and coldblooded killing of a prisoner...
...It seems to me that abortion, like drugs and alcohol, is a symptom of aprob-lem rather than the cause, and that much more can be done to educate people and provide alternatives to abortion...
...I have often wondered why right-to-life people do not show the same concern for saving the lives of starving children around the world that they do for saving unborn fetuses...
...They understood the hardships that working women faced with multiple pregnancies...
...Is there any group, extant or in formation, that follows your reasoning...
...The goal was to locate twenty clients who could use counseling from our professional personnel...
...With this kind of split, no dialogue is possible...
...Cuomo spent roughly a page discussing why neither national nor state bars on abortion were tenable...
...It surely is Cuomo's right to make independent prudential political judgments...
...Incest...
...However, historians have told us that when birth control and abortions were not available, infanticide and abandonment were the practices of desperate parents...
...JOAN DUNN WALSH An end of dialogue Middletown, R.I...
...Mother's health...
...Perhaps that debt is best repaid by demanding that Cuomo live up to his intellectual and moral capabilities where any life issue is concerned...
...Should a fetus recognized to be missing a limb be aborted if the mother so chooses...
...Then again, his more recent designation of abortion as "a matter of the woman's conscience" (New York Times, September 9,1989) puts a clear answer to Cuomo's meaning out of focus, as does his discussion of public funding always in terms of fairness to poor women and never in terms of the consequence for the fetuses of these women...
...When a Catholic politician is prochoice, she or he is threatened with excommunication...
...The church's ability to persuade its own members, not to mention a pluralistic society, to ban abortions is undermined by its official prohibition of contraceptives, generally regarded as a responsible way of spacing children and preventing the need for abortions...
...But it is also his duty, at least when treating serious issues, to explain how he arrives at those judgments...
...The third year the funding is to decrease to $25,000 and we are told to seek outside funding...
...I am ready to work with it...
...If a real national dialogue can ever be undertaken on this matter, perhaps legislation that satisfies a wider consensus can be implemented...
...Fudging matters further, Cuomo spoke of abortion, divorce, and birth control in the same breath no fewer than four times...
...I guess I'm wrong there too...
...We have seen this in Romania recently...
...Cuomo has to state plainly and consistently when (if ever) he believes the fetus constitutes an actual person and then shoulder his very heavy burden in arguing for the legal tolerance of abortions beyond that point...
...In spite of that, no moral sanctions were urged for COMING Why the Third World Languishes those who build, deploy, and control nuclear weapons, nor on members of the military who destroy innocent life in war...
...Cuomo keeps unclear whether he regards all, or any, abortions to constitute the taking of an actual human life...
...issue of abortion, but the blame you place on them for destroying a widely focused women's movement reflects too much the hysteria you decry in your opponents...
...I grew up with the Catholic teaching that a wife must have intercourse with her husband-God forbid that you used a contraceptive-and if there were complications in childbirth the life of the fetus took precedence over the life of the mother...
...No evidence, no argument...
...KATHLEEN C. RIDDER Projecting hysteria Pittsburgh, Pa...
...At this year's beginning, I left the state that Cuomo has kept free of the death penalty and took up residence in a Southern state with an abundance of death row inmates and a dearth of lawyers to represent them...
...I used to think the differences between religious viewpoints in America, unlike in Ireland, were open to reason and compromise...
...When a fetus becomes a person is still debatable...
...Most essentially, Cuomo frames the abortion discussion so that his burden of persuasion as to why he need not press for abortion's outlawing is very light...
...As Supreme Court Justice O'Connor has observed: If the state has the power to prohibit abortions, then it can also have the power to require them...
...JOSEPH MULHOLLAND No funding for life Scipio Center, N.Y...
...There is an underlying thread of misogyny, hatred of women, in the tradition that leads to such inconsistencies...
...The governor's ambiguity on this point, again, is a carry-over from Notre Dame...
...To the Editors: People of good will can welcome the intelligent and lucid arguments Governor Cuomo utilizes in his letter to Commonweal, as well as his call for further dialogue to replace the shouting matches between prolife and prochoice proponents...
...There are holes in the seamless garment that need to be patched...
...If the state decides, then how will it decide, who will be punished, and what will the penalties be...
...I decry as well as the editors the social climate that makes potential human beings disposable items...
...they include such traditional groups as the League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, Business and Professional Women, the YMCA, and the National Council of Jewish Women...
...when does a fetus become a person...
...ANTHONY J. DiSTEFANO Cuomo 'ambiguous' Birmingham, Ala...
...2) Should parents who wanted a boy (or girl) and learn by amniocentesis that their wish was not granted be allowed to abort without comment...
...And so would their persuasiveness on the morality of abortion...
...Until adequate funding is available to support the child in this decade through programs that have proven to be successful, the governor's statement that...
...I could list other such questions ad nauseam...
...In underdeveloped countries-most especially those in Catholic Latin America-contraceptives are essential for population control, a necessary ingredient in moving beyond poverty...
...Without referring to either the pie-Roe status of state-level politics or the overwhelming majority of states which preclude public funding of abortions, the governor dismissed a return to a state-by-state approach as leading to a "checkerboard of permissive and restrictive jurisdictions" and a continuation of abortion by the "millions...
...Who shall decide whether a fetus is brought to term-the parents or the state...
...Were the bishops to direct their aggressive legislative support and devote vastly more of church resources to, say, childcare centers in poor neighborhoods, their credibility among women would be enhanced...
...Because men make wars and women have abortions...
...I used to believe in progress and the human capacity for rationality...
...In the early twentieth century critics charged women with focusing too exclusively on the effort to gain the right to vote, and just recently critics have blamed women's organizations for placing too much emphasis on passing the Equal Rights Amendment...
...JEAN VAAS Church not credible...
...Because there is no consensus on abortion, and because abortion may, at times, be a moral act, then the Roe v. Wade decision, as I understand it, seems just and prudent...
...Let us make an end to cant, and seek the middle ground, where, I suspect, reason can prevail...
...MARY JOHANNA RYAN Symptom not cause Alexandria, Va...
...There he referred to "life in the womb, which is at the very least potentially human and should not be extinguished casually" [emphasis added] and also stated: "At the very least, even if the argument is made by some scientists or some theologians that in the earliest stages of fetal development we cannot discern human life, the full potential of human life is indisputably there" [emphasis added...
...In his letter he baldly pronounces: "My prudential political judgment, formed by examining all available evidence, is that these [abortion-restricting] actions would not have such desirable effects [as engendering greater respect for life...
...First, and fundamentally, the governor's letter, like the 1984 Notre Dame address on which he relies, reaches political conclusions too easily while harboring too much ethical ambiguity...
...Here are a few that interest me: (1) I am a person with polio and walk with the aid of a brace...
...But did he mean life and death of an actual or a merely potential person...
...Historians still debate whether such a narrow focus damaged the women's movement, and even whether women's organizations focused as narrowly as critics suggested...
...The staff has estimated that the client list could double...
...As a longtime subscriber and a member of Commonweal Associates, I am very disturbed...
...And since it is women who ultimately hold fetal life in their hands, hiring a public relations firm to sell their position on abortion will not be effective until the bishops deal with this misogyny...
...A single issue is the most effective political weapon...
...Perhaps Governor Cuomo can be a leader of such a movement...
...Ironically, my second reason for disappointment over Mario Cuomo's mishandling of abortion is deepened by a recently renewed appreciation for his stand against the death penalty...
...These teachings were balanced by my grandfather, a doctor in a large Catholic hospital, who refused to sign the cardinal's petition that called for banning the sale of contraceptives, and by a mother who promoted the rhythm system among the seventy-five women in her workroom (Continued on page 364) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 338) during the Depression...
...A loving and supportive society is not coming tomorrow, and people are suffering today...
...Should abortion be primarily a matter of conscience or primarily a matter of law...
...I recognize that abortion is a moral issue, one on which the bishops have not only a right but an obligation to express their opinions...
...Contrary to much rhetoric on this topic, I believe the problem will never be solved on an either/or, bipolar basis...
...That speech ran slightly over eighteen pages...
...Abortion is sinful but, practically, has to remain legal" rolls off the lips a lot more smoothly than "Abortion is homicidal but, practically, has to remain legal...
...The Finger Lakes Office of Social Ministry (FLOSM) is one of three regional offices in the diocese of Rochester serving people through various support programs...
...But I believe any outsider would be struck by the way in which the death penalty acts like a foul toxin contaminating this purportedly Christian community...
...I feel morally I must withdraw my support and ask you to discontinue my subscription and take my name from the roster of Associates...
...What available evidence...
...You single out NOW and NARAL as "having positioned themselves as the more or less official voices of the women's movement...
...For one example] you suggest that both NOW and NARAL have reduced a women's movement once aimed broadly at "economic, social, and educational justice" which maintained "a vision of a more egalitarian society" to the single issue of abortion...
...Or other physical defects that some of us would recognize as relatively minor...
...any abortion at all: both positions are wrong to me...
...Your criticism echoes charges leveled against women at least twice before in the history of the American women's movement...
...The program attempts to promote self-sufficiency for pregnant and parenting teens through a community-based system of service, networking, and referral...
...It is the church's response or lack of response to matters of human sexuality and justice for women that in part explains why I find myself politically for freedom of choice...
...To the Editors: Thank you for inviting responses to your stand on abortion ["Strategy Time III...
...Any New Yorker in exile, moreover, would feel a very genuine sense of debt to Cuomo for sparing the Empire State such moral pollution...
...only partial funding, if any, is warranted for a program to support life...
...In the future, however, one would hope that the governor would address some more complex issues...
...No abortion at all...
...You fail to mention the many other women's organizations which support a women's right to choose...
...I appreciate your placing articles such as DiSalvo's, but I feel your editorial policy is inflammatory rather than conciliatory...
...It provides direct services which address personal, educational, vocational, social, and physical needs...
...While I support Cardinal Bernardin's call for creating a consistent ethic of life [Commonweal, April 20], I do not see consistency in the tradition as he does...
...whether he acknowledges the fetus as a person at any gestational point...
...Birth control failure...
...To the Editors: As a Roman Catholic woman and mother of two teen-agers, I am concerned that the reasoned debate you have called for on the abortion issue has not included the women's point of view...
...In contrast, any Catholic woman who...
...Cardinal Bernardin, as chair of the committee of bishops who prepared The Challenge of Peace, is aware that the danger of nuclear war is the most serious threat to life on earth today...
Vol. 117 • June 1990 • No. 11
