COMMENT
COMMENT 'Roe' Must Stand 'Nowadays, a reasonable life does not include shotgun weddings, or dropping out of school, or embracing the minimum wage for life. Still less does it include bearing a...
...Many people on the Left—especially, again, on the religious Left—share this certainty...
...What a bunch of rot...
...I hope and trust it will not be necessary to reintroduce the forty-eight-hours bill in the future...
...As evidence of the grip Vietnam holds on the Pentagon, pick up the January issue of Military Review, which is prepared by the U.S...
...In the meantime, the nomination has caused an uproar in South Korea...
...Supreme Court ruling that a woman has a constitutional right to privacy that protects her right to choose abortion, must stand...
...Now the way to do that is to say politics stops at the seaboard— and anyone who denies that postulate is a son-of-a-bitch and a crook and not a true patriot...
...Any other law of the land would impose the will of a few on all...
...Since then, one member of the majority has been replaced by Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose views on the subject are officially unknown but thought to be anti-Roe...
...Among these are the War Powers Act and laws restricting the Central Intelligence Agency...
...White males voters did go disproportionately for Bush (and Reagan), but that doesn't mean the Democrats should cater to white males—especially to their basest sentiments...
...You can know in your heart that you would never choose, yourself, to destroy a fetus you have conceived...
...House Jim Wright said it was "an opening gesture of good faith on our part" and a move toward bipartisanship...
...Politics of Race Defeat is not an orphan...
...But, friends, that war began in earnest a quarter of a century ago...
...Gregg has the wrong kind of track record and background to represent the United States at a time of great sensitivity and growing anti-American sentiment," says Pharis Harvey, executive director of the North American Coalition for Human Rights in Korea...
...Using these, we are told by others in the anti-abortion crowd, is birth control, not murder...
...military that Rodriguez was Bush's main man for the contras...
...Reversing Roe would also bring another kind of chaos: The availability of legal abortions would again be up to the states...
...Still reeling from the Dukakis debacle, many pundits and Democratic Party hacks have reached for an easy and unsettling explanation: The Party has been too kind to blacks in general and to Jesse Jackson in particular...
...But it was his work as Bush's national-security adviser that raised the eyebrows...
...Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinion in Roe, said recently there is "a distinct possibility" it will "go down the drain this term...
...The peace plan offered by Salvadoran rebels 'is not a peace proposal...
...What is surprising—well, not surprising any more, but distressing nonetheless—is the willingness of Congress to go along...
...The subject still roils, and the military can't decide whether to blame the American people for not going along or blame themselves for not fighting more effectively...
...Everyplace else, predicts Eleanor Smeal, president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority, would be a battleground, with the highly emotional abortion issue bound to dominate state politics for years to come...
...They say that abortion doesn't encourage—even inhibits—the changes in society needed for women to break the poverty cycle and be able to raise their children comfortably, that it won't change male attitudes toward women...
...Their numbers also include those who oppose abortion in any form but would also deny women access to contraceptive devices and contraceptive advice, and who even lobby against sex education in the schools...
...For proof, just watch a sporting event with a randomly selected group of them...
...But the issue is not clear-cut to most people, and what you cannot do is make up their minds for them...
...Racism remains the bedrock of American society...
...They harass women at clinics, screaming obscenities...
...This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by memory...
...Ghost of Iran-contra George Bush can't leave the Iran-contra scandal behind him...
...Many, of course, don't tell us much except that people are confused...
...It is a proposal of war/ says Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte...
...Villoldo advocated an aggressive strategy of offensive guerrilla warfare, which included a program of political kidnappings aimed at the wives and children of Sandinista officials, one contra leader told Nairn...
...Pro-choice advocates say only five, possibly seven, states have legislatures likely to allow abortions without substantial restrictions...
...Some foes of abortion rights don't deserve to be taken seriously...
...The last time Fried dragged out his reverse-itoe brief was in a 1986 case, and he lost in a 5-to-4 decision...
...The Missouri law under review in Webster declares in its preamble that life begins at conception...
...It's not surprising that Bush, or any other President, seeks to aggrandize his office...
...Our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other," he said...
...The Vice President's aides were "essentially acting as managers of the activities," says Brenneke, who claims to have had several conversations with Gregg about the logistics of these deals...
...About abortion in the abstract, or about a single abortion for an individual pregnant woman...
...The racism that prevails in our society needs to be confronted, not coddled...
...H In 1983, Gregg sent Gustavo Villoldo, a Bay of Pigs veteran, to Honduras to work as a combat adviser for the contras...
...Polls on the subject of abortion abound...
...Ship of Fools Bipartisanship, the unsinkable vessel of American politics, steams out of port again, Captain Bush at the helm...
...Bipartisanship is, and always has been, a hoax...
...Reagan and Bush are credited for using the "symbols" of American politics better than their Democratic opponents...
...The Democrats need to honor their reputation for advocating civil rights...
...Another fifteen or so would immediately outlaw abortions or pass extremely restrictive laws...
...But the Pentagon hasn't forgotten Vietnam...
...It is reconsidering the War Powers Act and has shelved legislation that would have required the White House to notify it of any covert operations within forty-eight hours— the sole, paltry recommendation that came out of the Iran-contra hearings...
...Gregg served in the CIA for twenty-eight years, including three years in Seoul, reportedly as station chief...
...Tom Smith, its director of social surveys, recently explained abortion polls to The New York Times...
...We never talked about the contras," Gregg told Nairn...
...They bring disgrace to the nonviolent tactics developed by the civil-rights movement by employing them to deny women entry to clinics...
...Some people are certain they have the answers...
...It would be the tyranny of a minority imposing its measure of morality on the 90 per cent who believe the right choice for any woman depends on the circumstances...
...This arrangement was in place at a time when the first Boland Amendment barred CIA involvement in efforts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua...
...It's not a tactic to emulate...
...Gregg's shady past should make the Senate take a long hard look at his—and the Vice President's— involvement in Iran-contra...
...But there is no agreement among theologians or anyone else about the origins of life...
...The sheer magnitude of public disagreement— the obvious lack of anything approaching moral consensus—is argument enough that a free society must let the individual decide...
...11 Richard J. Brenneke, an Oregon arms dealer, says Gregg helped arrange clandestine arms shipments to the Nicaraguan contras during 1985 and 1986...
...To wipe away memory is to discard knowledge and to ditch morality—and that's exactly what Bush wanted to do by whisking Vietnam under the rug of time...
...H Gregg sent Felix Rodriguez, a friend of his since 1970 when they worked together on CIA counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam, to the Ilopango air base in El Salvador in early 1985 to aid the contra resupply effort...
...Villoldo was permitted to run his own semi-autonomous contra-support operation with backing from the CIA station while remaining off the agency payroll and outside its line of authority...
...They view Gregg's nomination as an insult and as an obvious sign that CIA meddling will continue...
...It's not an idle debate, for the officers realize that America's next war is likely to be another counterinsurgency...
...Some of them—believers in the sanctity of life, they say—set fires and even bomb clinics...
...But for Bush, Vietnam means restraints on Presidential power that he wants removed...
...Kay Castonguay, president of Feminists for Life of Minnesota, wrote recently in Political Woman that abortion is the remedy of a male-dominated society that expects women to conform to the needs of men—that it allows women to become "unpregnant" at will so that men can go on ignoring the need to accept and accommodate women, their pregnancies included...
...we just have opinions...
...No, Roe v. Wade must stand...
...Polling experts agree that people are more likely to say they favor abortion rights when the question is framed in terms of "a woman's right to choose" than when the question talks about "protecting the unborn child...
...Now if people will swallow that, then you're off to the races...
...Another form of opposition to abortion comes from people who describe themselves as feminists...
...The result of reversing Roe would be chaos...
...Much of the opposition to abortion, especially among religious groups, is based on this assumption—thus the notion that abortion is murder...
...Now, with exquisite tact, Bush has nominated Gregg to be U.S...
...it is an orphanage...
...Rodriguez's primary commitment to the region is in [deleted], where he wants to assist the FDN," the main contra force...
...From the Vice President's office, Gregg placed former CIA buddies in Central America to train the contras, as Allan Nairn reported in two articles for The Progressive...
...To the emotional burdens they bear would now be added the extra weight of choosing whether to become criminals...
...The issue can be that clear-cut for you...
...Charles Fried, then the Reagan Administration's Solicitor General, weighed in on Missouri's side with a friend-of-the-court brief...
...The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago has been asking questions about abortion since 1965...
...Their decisions are never easy, nor are they made lightly...
...A third poll the same year found more than 90 per cent saying abortion is sometimes the best way out of a bad situation...
...Because "the Vietnam War offers a wealth of information on the future of combat in the Twenty-first Century...
...error but to steer foreign policy away from the shoals of debate and disagreement...
...They are committed to the protection of life and see threats not only from abortion but also from war, poverty, the arms race, the death penalty, and euthanasia...
...Is it not murder because the woman doesn't know she has done it...
...Why is studying Vietnam so important for the Army...
...Villoldo carried a letter of recommendation from Gregg...
...But what could be more unfeminist than to ask the Supreme Court to take away a woman's right to make up her own mind...
...The reason you get different results," he said, "is that there are 10 per cent of the people who are absolutely against abortion, except maybe to save the mother's life, and 30 per cent who are for abortion on demand, and that leaves 60 per cent who swing back and forth conditionally, depending on what trimester and what circumstances you're talking about...
...Califano, who served under President Carter as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, put it most crudely: The Democrats, he wrote in The New York Times Magazine, must undo the "perception among middle-class, white voters that Democrats unduly favor their black constituency, [which] was reinforced by the kinder, gentler handling of Jesse Jackson during the 1988 primaries...
...Rodriguez is "operating as a private citizen but his acquaintanceship with the VP is real enough, going back to the latter days of DCI [Director of Central Intelligence]," wrote General Paul Gorman, head of U.S...
...Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S...
...Dean Acheson, Secretary of State under Harry Truman, said it best: "Bipartisan foreign policy is the ideal for the Executive because you can't run this damned country any other way...
...The Missouri legislature might also pass a law declaring that the Earth is flat, but that would not make it so...
...When does life begin...
...Army Command and General Staff College...
...They will again, if Roe is overturned...
...military forces in Central America, in a memo to the U.S...
...Women of no means went to back-alley hacks or made do with coat hangers...
...Since Roe v. Wade, a generation of women has come of age secure in the knowledge they can decide for themselves whether to terminate an unwelcome pregnancy...
...Ambassador to South Korea...
...But it was clear to the U.S...
...In withdrawing the legislation, Speaker of the West German Admiral Elmar Schmahling, who heads the Office for Studies and Exercises, a military think tank, has 'embarrassed' his government, reports the Sunday Times of London, by calling for an end to the 'militarization of foreign relations' and proposing that funds now 'wasted on senseless armaments' be spent instead 'to solve the world's real problems.' Two hearts that beat as one: The peace plan offered by the PLO is just 'another step in the war of Arab terror organizations against Israel's existence and independence/ says Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir...
...and, surely, the statute of limitations has been reached...
...But they had abortions, or died in the attempt...
...As for specific questions about whether abortion should be legal, the results depend on how they are framed...
...And white males tend to major in it...
...If he is right, and there's no reason to doubt him, outlawing abortions again in America would be something much worse than the tyranny of a majority that the Bill of Rights was designed to prevent...
...Still less does it include bearing a baby for strangers to adopt, as George Bush blithely suggests.9 -Katha Pollitt in The New York Times You don't have to like the idea that more than a million American women feel compelled to choose abortions each year...
...Gregg and Rodriguez talked often by phone and met repeatedly between November 1983 and August 1986—and during this period, Rodriguez met twice with then-Vice President Bush...
...The reason: Donald Gregg...
...That war cleaves us still...
...ambassador in El Salvador...
...We have not thought nearly enough about the meaning of Vietnam to our Army and our nation," writes Colonel Phillip W. Childress, editor-in-chief of Military Review...
...Califano and his fellow theorists can read polls, but polls should not dictate politics...
...As national-security adviser under Vice President Bush, Gregg was the point man for a clandestine and illegal contra-support operation...
...Opposition leaders and major newspapers have condemned the nomination, and students have demonstrated against it...
...One of those symbols was racism...
...And it really is just a few...
...It's been this way since Vietnam...
...When abortions were illegal everywhere in this country, in the 1960s, women of means went to Europe for legal abortions, or went to Miami and other places known for their clandestine clinics, or went to the local doctor—there was one in almost every town—who offered illegal, safe, very expensive abortions...
...This won't guarantee that they will win the next election, but if they turn their backs on African-Americans, they won't deserve to win...
...We don't know...
...But he did so not to acknowledge U.S...
...The Roman Catholic Church is almost alone in condemning, consistently, the more passive ways to abort a fertilized egg—such means as intrauterine devices and some kinds of pills...
...Joseph Califano, John Sasso, David Broder, and Tom Wicker have all subscribed to this theory...
...The Congress, controlled by Democrats, is already rolling over dead for Bush...
...In his marshmallow Inaugural Address, Bush dared to speak the word "Vietnam...
...His appointment inevitably gives the impression that Korea is to be the object of American manipulation rather than diplomacy...
...Roe is, however, in imminent danger, thanks to the Court's announcement in January that it will take up Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, a case in which the state of Missouri, in defending its unusually restrictive law regulating abortions, has asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe...
...In 1985, two separate national polls found more than half the people saying abortion is a form of murder...
...The entire issue is devoted to Vietnam...
Vol. 53 • March 1989 • No. 3
