Comment
Comment The Wire Next Time? In an action notable for its hypocrisy even in this most hypocritical Administration, Ronald Reagan's Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on July 15 to reverse...
...But if some future tribunal were to embark on such a catastrophic course, it would surely not put an end to abortion...
...Roe v. Wade was, as critics always point out, an arbitrary decision that left many questions unanswered and many interests unsatisfied...
...The Administration appears to take special satisfaction in manipulating its loyal fans—proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment, for example, after incurring monstrous budget deficits, or demanding tax reform after exacerbating the inequities of the tax system...
...The anniversary of the events in Grenada/ the resolution states, 'is an appropriate time for the American people to focus on the dangers of Leninism and the lessons of communist behavior.' Two Steps Backward Feminists had little to cheer about at two recent meetings of nationwide women's groups...
...One effort to deal with the problem of teen-age abortion takes the form of parental notification laws...
...Toyota and Mitsubishi are planning to build large U.S...
...They put government in the position of determining what should be an individual choice, and they don't strike at one of the principal causes of smoking...
...The America Syndrome Why would Ronald Reagan, earnest anticom-munist, sign a nuclear cooperation agreement with—his epithet—"regimented" China...
...It's absolutely wonderful and it is terrifying to the bone,' says Brandon Stoddard, chief of ABC Motion Pictures...
...Evidence for firm answers is not easy to come by," wrote James LeMoyne...
...A partial answer: Westinghouse Electric, Combustion Engineering, General Electric (Reagan's alma mater), Sargent and Lundy, Bechtel Corporation (George Shultz's alma mater), and United Engineers and Construction...
...Eleanor Smeal, back in office after a one-term absence, plans to sink much of NOW's money and energy into yet another battle for the Equal Rights Amendment...
...Reagan has read the Nicaraguans the riot act...
...If surgery follows, the physical and psychological damage can be extensive...
...tions, and spends most of its resources promoting nuclear power...
...But that effect has not been achieved by a remarkable increase in teen-age chastity, nor by an equivalent increase in live births...
...least, the fear of being bombed by the air force was part of the daily life of those who remain in areas where there is frequent fighting...
...Though the National Organization for Women (NOW) elected a president who promised to go "back out into the streets," it remains mired in the same old soggy turf...
...When it comes to bailing out his business buddies, Reagan knows how to swallow his ideology...
...To judge from the volume of Reagan Administration rhetoric, it may well be...
...By all rights, it should have plummeted in mid-July, not only among the majority of Americans who support free choice on abortion, but especially among the substantial minority who call themselves pro-life...
...Making this vice more expensive (or trying to hide it) is a cruel favor at best, especially when nothing is done to improve the quality of work and establish a richer sense of community...
...gay persons are gay by choice so they do not deserve government protection...
...He accepted a bland, oral assurance from Chinese President Li Xiannian, who promised to use American technology for peaceful purposes...
...Cigarettes are consumed primarily by those with menial jobs and by middle-class workers in highly competitive and stressful occupations, The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out...
...The Court's answer was a limited one: It established a woman's constitutional right to choose abortion during the first trimester of a pregnancy...
...No reversal of Roe v. Wade is in the cards until the Court's composition undergoes drastic changes...
...But the U.S...
...media are not so sure...
...Michigan reportedly pledged to change its unemployment insurance system and worker compensation laws...
...Few outside the gay community challenged the groundless presumption that gay households endanger their youthful inhabitants...
...invasion...
...In Massachusetts, such a law correlates with a SO per cent decrease in teen-age abortion...
...Fostering Bigotry Hiding their prejudice behind a worn facade of social concern, homophobic Americans are once again out to make discrimination the law of the land...
...policy toward Nicaragua...
...the menace to civilians appears to be real...
...In an action notable for its hypocrisy even in this most hypocritical Administration, Ronald Reagan's Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on July 15 to reverse its historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion in the United States...
...Dems the Breaks Democrats control the House of Representatives, but you wouldn't know it from their votes...
...companies hungering for a share of China's $6 billion reactor construction program...
...Marines in El Salvador...
...reasonableness is in...
...In other words, something seems to be dropping death from the Salvadoran skies, but we can't be sure what it is until a government—theirs or ours— issues a press release...
...Representatives Newt Gingrich, Republican of Georgia, and Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri, are sponsors of a House resolution designating a Lessons of Grenada Week to commemorate the October 1983 U.S...
...While gays are denied the opportunity to be loving parents, hatred and fear have found permanent homes...
...Adding insult to injury was the American Bar Association...
...At one point in the interview, "Nixon sits up straight...
...But in fueling the fantasy that Roe v. Wade can and will eventually be undone, and that obtaining or performing an abortion will again become a felony in this country, the President helps to perpetuate and intensify a particularly corrosive and disruptive social conflict...
...Divide and Conquer And what am I bid for the Saturn plant...
...It was the 7-to-2 judgment of essentially the same Nixon/Burger Court that sits today...
...Free Press at Work After consistently ignoring the Salvadoran government's air war against peasants of that land, the mainstream press finally gave it some play in July—but only to minimize the horror...
...Maybe Reagan has a secret plan: He's going to sell China the nuclear rope by which it will hang itself...
...Furthermore, as recently as two years ago, the high tribunal rejected, by a vote of 6-to-3, several Reagan-supported challenges to the abortion ruling...
...Spring Hill, Tennessee, was chosen largely because three-fourths of the U.S...
...The Big Stick In his latest reincarnation, Richard Nixon told Time magazine that he had considered using nuclear weapons on several occasions, first as Vice President and later as President...
...According to the Archdiocese of San Salvador, the air force has carried out 716 aerial bombing attacks on civilian population centers over the last three years...
...I don't think it's a question of being inside the system or outside the system, in the streets or in blue suits," said Gloria Steinem...
...To nab the Saturn plant, a long parade of officials marched into Detroit with promises of tax-exempt financing, state-funded training for workers, and other goodies...
...When he finishes his tale, "Nixon relaxes, delighted...
...Nicaragua, Reagan said in July, is one of five "outlaw states" that are now "engaged in acts of war against the Government and people of the United States...
...The governor and the state legislature defended the policy and passed a law limiting foster placements to persons "whose sexual orientation presents no threat to the well-being of the child...
...It was a conservative panel of middle-aged to elderly men who had come to understand that something had to be done about an intolerable situation...
...So far, Reagan's devoted followers have allowed the President to get away with this kind of double-entry bookkeeping...
...These are some of the U.S...
...The outcome confirmed what business analysts had maintained all along: Plums wouldn't determine Saturn's location...
...To Comment On tap for ABC television's 1986-1987 season is a sixteen-hour miniseries called 'Amerika.' According to the script, the Soviet Union has taken over the United States without a shot being fired...
...But anyone who has a genuine respect for life should look with loathing on the prospect that Roe v. Wade might be reversed...
...He is about to tell a story he enjoys"—how he and President Eisenhower almost nuked the Soviets during the 1959 Berlin crisis...
...Moreover, smoking is twice as common among blue-collar workers as among professional and technical workers...
...Opponents of the measure dredged up the old red herrings: Gay teachers imperil the young...
...Rather, the number of minors having abortions in neighboring states rose by a number remarkably similar to the decrease in Massachusetts.' —Christianity and Crisis April IS, 1985 The statistics on abortion in the United States since Roe v. Wade testify to the significance of the ruling...
...left it up to the states to decide how a pregnancy might be terminated during the second trimester in order to protect a woman's health, and made the survival of a fetus the overriding consideration during the final trimester...
...Our ability to act in the world is hopelessly compromised by our sexual being...
...As Ellen Willis wrote recently in The Village Voice, "Without control of our fertility we can never envision ourselves as free, for our biology makes us constantly vulnerable...
...The Democrats should be for some stuff—for MX, for binaries [nerve gas], for more money for the Midgetman, for more money for conventional weapons," Aspin recently told The Washington Post...
...Efforts to curb smoking by raising the price, or by limiting cigarette advertising, are misguided...
...Witnesses are highly partisan...
...it rejected a call for legislation to protect gay Americans in employment, housing, and public accommodations...
...The worth of early treatment remains to be proven...
...In case the Sandinistas missed the threat, the Reagan Administration ten days later sent the Nicaraguan government a terse diplomatic note holding it responsible for the murder of four U.S...
...Poor Sin Tax Americans are taking an increasing interest in personal lifestyle—especially that of the folks next door...
...One complicating factor is that health-care corporations—equipment manufacturers, drug suppliers, hospitals—have an incentive to sell the public on early diagnosis...
...But increased survival rates associated with early detection may be nothing more than statistical tricks...
...The note warned that another such incident "anywhere in Central America" would have "serious consequences" for Nicaragua...
...it would simply drive millions of women back to the tender mercies of wire coathanger wielders and back-alley abortionists...
...Promoters of the so-called sin tax argue that it protects health and raises revenues...
...But no gadget or medical procedure touches the industrial, nutritional, and environmental carcinogens that cause up to 80 per cent of all cancer cases...
...I am struck by the extent these women are focused, pragmatic, and serious," one participant observed...
...Armed with concession packages promised by the losers, it is squeezing Tennessee for tax breaks, utility discounts, and funds for employee training...
...New York, not to be outdone by the Bay State, is considering legislation that would prohibit both adoption and foster care by gays and lesbians...
...The competition among states is not likely to cease with Saturn...
...Women went on to name Jane Fonda, Geraldine Ferraro, Marie Curie, Susan B, Anthony, Golda Meir, Barbra Streisand, their own grandmothers, and the Virgin Mary...
...Feminist ideals were diluted even more at the annual convention of the National Women's Political Caucus, where one leader after another truckled to the Establishment...
...Almost every state in the union responded, and the site-selection process soon took on the atmosphere of a freewheeling country auction...
...But king-size paternalism helps no one...
...Maybe the CIA can help him out...
...This cheap political maneuver was particularly contemptible because it was designed to exploit some of Reagan's own most ardent (and gullible) admirers, his overheated anti-abortion constituency...
...China still has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty...
...Time doesn't say whether he also smoked a cigarette or went right to sleep...
...It seems highly unlikely, in fact, that any SuComment preme Court—even one composed of nine members hand-picked by Reagan—would invite the utter social chaos that would surely attend a reversal of the abortion decision...
...The Puritan impulse to monitor thy neighbor, coupled with an expanding government bureaucracy, has spurred many varieties of encroachments, one of which is the excise tax on cigarettes...
...Led by Les Aspin of Wisconsin, who heads the House Armed Services Committee, the Democrats are lurching right—and they are proud of it...
...They ought to be promoting sex education, safe and effective forms of contraception, social and economic programs that will enable more women who want children to have them...
...They are saying, 'Tell us what the rules are, tell us what the process is, because we want to win.'" Caucus members saw outgoing chairwoman Kathy Wilson extend an olive branch to President Reagan, praising him for "softening" his anti-woman image...
...And these are the firms smarting from a crash in the domestic market, where no reactor has been ordered since 1978...
...They should have recognized the President's action for the utterly cynical maneuver it was...
...The Cancer Panic The tardy treatment of President Reagan's cancer has produced curious side effects, most notably a media blitz calling for "early detection" of the disease...
...Here's LeMoyne: "At...
...But the effect on health is questionable, and the social costs formidable...
...Still, GM plans to profit from the bidding war...
...We ought to distance [ourselves] from the Left by voting for some weapons...
...business, a pound of cure is more lucrative than an ounce of prevention...
...This is the Administration's ultimate hypocrisy...
...With a work life either meaningless or ulcerating, and a community life all but extinct, it is little wonder that some Americans try to find pleasure in tobacco...
...All this for naught...
...Bolstered by public sympathy for his health problems, the President's popularity is riding high...
...Here's Williams, after discounting the claims of civilian bombings: "Nonetheless...
...Men admired Marilyn Monroe, rock singer Madonna, Joan of Arc, Christie Brinkley, Nancy Reagan, their own wives and girlfriends, and Margaret Thatcher...
...For Reagan's benefit, the People's Republic did agree to join the International Atomic Energy Agency—a body that rarely imposes sanctions, never makes surprise inspecIf the Reagan vision of outlawing abortion were realized, it might not bring a single fetus to full term...
...gay sex is a "crime against nature...
...The Gender Gap Male and female students at the University of Wisconsin regard their own mothers, Mother Teresa, and Amelia Earhart as heroines, according to a random survey, but their agreement ends there...
...Like all sales taxes, the levy on cigarettes is regressive...
...Simply because we are female our physical integrity can be violated, our lives disrupted and transformed, at any time...
...The sin tax ends up being a class tax...
...Does anyone in the White House, in the Justice Department, or in any but the most fanatical segments of the right-to-life movement imagine that millions of women who rely on or support the free choice granted by Roe v. Wade would gracefully relinquish that freedom if the Supreme Court were to change its mind...
...Treasury receives about $5 billion a year from the tax on cigarettes...
...And early in July, while Saturn offers were still trickling in, GM leaned on seventeen Michigan communities to reduce tax assessments on its plants...
...The Reverend Jerry Falwell has launched a new anti-gay campaign that calls for mandatory prison sentences for any individual suffering from AIDS who continues to engage in sexual activity...
...market falls within 500 miles of that state...
...Nonetheless, it had an immensely liberating impact on women in the United States...
...Much testimony condemning bombing comes from peasants who identify themselves as rebel supporters...
...The confession was not new—nothing ever is with Nixon—but it nicely captured his enduring passion for the Bomb...
...Reagan and his Justice Department are, of course, fully aware of this fact...
...Most of the witnesses are civilians who sympathize with the rebellion and have relatives under arms...
...It is the folly of the Prohibitionists (who thought outlawing liquor would end drinking) now revived with a vengeance—and a vengeance directed particularly against women and their principal instrument of liberation...
...In the last do/en years, some fifteen million pregnancies have been terminated by abortion—about 1.5 million a year (one pregnancy in four) in recent years...
...But even if an ERA campaign could strengthen NOW, it would not combat the feminization of poverty, curb rape and other violence against women, help NOW build bridges to lesbians and minority women, or confront any of the concrete problems women face every day...
...But it would produce a sizable new criminal class in the United States, and it would surely claim the lives of innumerable women...
...And what am I bid for a Japanese auto plant...
...Somehow, the notion seems to have taken hold among right-to-lifers that Roe v. Wade was the decision of some earlier, "liberal" Supreme Court...
...To be sure, early detection might benefit cancer patients, but the data aren't clear...
...In fact, there is an unacknowledged danger in the push for early detection: Some patients subjected to complicated diagnostic procedures might fall victim to "false positives"—alarm bells that ring when no cancer exists...
...Iowa vowed to help cover Saturn workers' salaries...
...It is difficult to verify the charges of indiscriminate bombing," wrote Washington Post reporter Dan Williams...
...Sometimes we need people outside in the streets to make those inside in blue suits look reasonable...
...War Waiting to Happen Ithink this is a decisive year for us," said Robert McFarlane, President Reagan's national security adviser, when asked about U.S...
...asked General Motors when it put its newfangled auto factory on the block in January...
...Government officials universally defend the air force...
...Two days earlier, an almost identical story ran in The New York Times, replete with the same dodges...
...Of course, the Government should not be subsidizing tobacco growers, and it has a legitimate interest in protecting the health of nonsmokers in a smoky society...
...Radicalism is out...
...Obviously, persons who learn of their cancer when it is just beginning tend to live longer after that point than those who find out late in the game...
...It wasn't...
...now all he needs is a riot...
...Involuntary manslaughter charges, Falwell adds, should be filed against anyone who 'knowingly* transmits AIDS to a person who subsequently dies of the disease...
...factories...
...Smeal says the strategy will bring contributions, new members, and heightened visibility to the organization...
...Those who hold earnest moral objections to abortion—and such objections should be respected even by those who do not share them—ought to be working in many ways to diminish the incidence of abortion in this country...
...the U.S...
...In Massachusetts, the Department of Social Services recently removed two boys from an approved foster home, claiming it was not in the children's best interest—in any child's best interest—to be raised by gay parents...
...The Left could help expand that distance by voting with its feet...
...The Court that legalized abortion was neither the Satanic instrument depicted in some of the more hysterical right-to-life tracts nor a humane and enlightened body determined to liberate women at long last from the bondage imposed by the obligation to bear unwanted children...
...According to the television doctors, prompt diagnosis can ensure a longer life...
...Tennessee, which had offered GM few incentives, walked away with the $3.5 billion plant when the gavel finally came down in July...
...Minnesota, never a strong contender for the plant, offered GM $1.2 billion worth of incentives...
...The President was so eager to open the China market that he put aside any apprehensions about weapons proliferation...
...In this session, the House has passed legislation to resume nerve gas production, provide aid to the contras, boost Star Wars funding by 80 per cent, repeal the Clark Amendment that banned aid to the Angolan rebels, add millions of dollars for Midgetman nuclear missiles, and restore the death penalty for peacetime spies in the military...
...It certainly does the latter...
...And seven governors groveled before GM Chairman Roger Smith on the Donahue show...
Vol. 49 • September 1985 • No. 9
