Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Wading in deeper New York, N.Y. To the Editors: It is hard not to concur with Commonweal's contention that the prolife movement is presented incompletely and unfairly in the...
...Nevertheless, it is those who most want Roe reversed or limited who should be most distressed by Bush's appointees...
...This is especially so since the transition to democracy owes a singular debt to the courageous lay workers in the "Ti Kominite Legliz" (TKL), which has empowered a new generation among the impoverished Haitian masses...
...Would that the Haitian bishops would indicate a willingness to suffer with their flock...
...it is even more a question of change in the hearts and minds of people who support Roe, not all of whom are strident, dogmatic, or blindly prejudiced...
...This Court will surely modify the law, but that change will do little to limit abortions, for its ruling will have been promulgated by a stacked Court—at least two of whose members, Souter and Thomas, are on it for no other clearly discernible reason...
...To the Editors: I read with interest the "Report on Haiti" [December 6, 1991] by John R Hogan and Bruce MacDonald...
...Dealing with Roe, then, requires justices whose scholarship and probity are beyond challenge...
...How can Clarence Thomas, with his woefully limited judicial experience, his youth, and his scanty scholarship, do much to persuade anyone that Roe v. Wade is bad law...
...The wide-ranging social changes initiated by the Warren Court were accepted as well as they were in large part because the men who formed that Court had earned their seats and had demonstrated both the magnanimity and the degree of objectivity one has a right to demand of a judge...
...To the Editors: It is hard not to concur with Commonweal's contention that the prolife movement is presented incompletely and unfairly in the media...
...I do this because of your failure to address assiduously the problem of controlling the inordinate growth of the world's population, "one of the two central determinants of the planet's future" (Jessica Mathews, vice-president of World Resource Institute...
...How can the Court persuade the people that strictures they place upon the right to abortion are in the interest of justice when they burden only the poor...
...The Vatican position on the question of population control is one thing, but how Commonweal, with its record of speaking in a prophetic voice, can be so insensitive in this regard is a question that I hope you will someday face forthrightly...
...Messrs...
...TRUMAN A. MORRISON, JR...
...Hogan- and MacDonald are correct in reporting that the poor are quite willing to endure the hemisphere-wide embargo, the only nonviolent point of leverage that can force the regressive forces now in power to negotiate an agreement to bring Father Aristide back to Haiti as president...
...I would agree that they blew it on Roe v. Wade, that the decision, to echo Mary Ann Glendon, canonizes the right to privacy with little regard for the parallel obligation of the polity to cherish life...
...JOHN KOZYN Theologies of growth Okemos, Mich...
...Thus, controlling abortion is not a matter only of a change in the law...
...As your writers suggest, it is a shame that Haiti's episcopal conference lacks the cohesion and political will to condemn the coup leaders and the atrocities which, according to the most recent estimate by the Organization of American States, have taken more than 1,500 lives in this latest and bloodiest chapter of Haiti's sad history...
...How can a Court which refused to hear the substantive plea of a man on death row because his out-of-state lawyers, unversed in the intricacies of Virginia law, filed the appeal three days too late, make anyone believe that when they limit Roe v. Wade, they do so out of respect for human life...
...As a former associate director of the Washington Office on Haiti, an advocacy group on behalf of Haiti's voiceless, I have followed events there closely...
...To the Editors: For many years I have been a subscriber to Commonweal, grateful for the critical and appreciative posture you and your writers have taken with regard to religion and society...
...MARIAN BURKHART Haiti's silent shepherds Arlington, Va...
...With real reluctance, I am not renewing my subscription or my advocacy of your publication within my range of public contacts...
...Your year's-end index for 1991 bears out my critical observation...
...This would make your distinguished journal again worthy of informed religious and secular readership...
...Nonetheless, there are many outside the media who are wholly persuaded that Roe v. Wade was a just decision, the Magna Carta of women's rights, and many others who have their doubts about it, but who also have doubts about how to change it...
...2: 14 February 1992 Commonweal...
Vol. 119 • February 1992 • No. 3
