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Opinion
University Daly Kannan, January 24. 1983-1983
University Daly Kannan, January 24. 1983-1983
SUA films in a crunch
A $6,000 deficit is straining the budget of the Student Union Activities Film Committee and threatens to further reduce the number of films it sponsors each semester. Already, the committee has had to abandon daily showings and leave some days open.
Attendance seems to be the primary culprit. Film rental costs have continued to rise while audiences have grown smaller, according to Gene Wee, SUA program adviser. This year, attendance has dropped 26 percent.
Unless the committee can bring in larger audiences, fewer films or higher ticket prices seem to be the only solutions to the film committee's budget problems.
Before deciding what course to take, the film committee will have to decide what its primary aim is — to provide KU moviegoers with films at cheap prices, or to provide them with everchanging, often non-traditional alternatives to the new releases shown at most area theaters.
Certainly, KU students and faculty appreciate the $1.50 price tag of SUA films. Traditionally, however, it has been the diversity of offerings that has set SUA films apart.
Only SUA regularly schedules cinema classics or foreign and experimental films. Only SUA risks showing little-known, but worthy films that can be guaranteed not to draw crowds.
The film committee has scheduled so-called blockbuster popular films for weekend showings to help pay for the losses incurred from films with less mass appeal. If this is not enough to improve the committee's financial situation, a small increase in ticket prices would be preferable to restrictions on the number or variety of films shown.
Even in these days of tight resources, a 25-cent increase would not put tickets for SUA films beyond the reach of KU students. If this is what it takes to preserve the SUA tradition, it is a worthy investment.
Fetus deserves human status
Ten years ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the right of privacy was broad enough to encompass a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy.
The matter is not at rest, however. Some of us are firm in the belief that a fetus is not merely a mass of cells but a human being. The fact that he has not yet left his mother's body does not make the unborn child any less a person than those of us walking on our own.
Those who celebrate the Supreme Court's Roe va. Wade decision of Jan. 22, 1973, will bejoice because women have been given freedom over women — one of the main arguments for abortion.
We all have a right to control our bodies, but no freedoms are absolute. Moreover, when a
JEANNE FOY
woman becomes pregnant, she is no longer the sole occupant of her body. For nine months, her body houses two human beings, both of whom are equally alive.
Some would argue that an unborn child cannot properly be called a human being, but only a potential person. Those people ignore that a fully developed, independently functioning body does not make a human being. A person is more than a fetus, and this means abortion, the law refuses to recognize that.
Indeed, the law is contradictory on the matter of fetal life. Why is it that abortion is permitted in the first two trimesters but can be prohibited in the last trimester? Why is a seven-month-old fetus given the status of human life, but not a two-month-old fetus? If the fetus were not a human being, surely it would not matter when an abortion was performed.
Abortion is largely a matter of convenience. Despite the best of precautions, when women engage in sexual activity they run the risk of accidental injury or even death. For serious drawback — whether one is a teenager,
an unwed mother, or a woman hitting the peak of her career.
Although no one has an abortion without much soul searching, an abortion is much easier than a murder.
A pregnancy can be a frightening and disruptive prospect. The temptation to have an abortion and avoid the emotional upheavals of having a baby are extremely strong. But in life many things are hard, and the easy route is not always best. As adults, we will fight with everything we have to protect our lives. Why can't we do the same for an unborn baby?
A woman who goes through with a pregnancy does not have to keep her baby. Such a course of action would be a tragedy for both the mother and the child. The child can be put up for adoption, and a woman can go on with her life without an unwanted baby.
Many times I have heard women say they would opt for abortion because if they had a child, they could not bear to give him away. This is an illogical argument. What they are saying, in effect, is that rather than go through the emotional stress of giving a baby up, even though the baby would have loving parents, they would rather abort.
Increasingly, it seems that the only determining factor in whether a child should be born is the mother's desire for the child. Abortion supporters argue that an unwanted child would not be happy and that quality of life takes precedence over quantity of life.
But who can really judge the quality of life? And must we always be deliriously happy to find life precious? Most of us have rough times in our lives, but maybe even years, yet we still nest in living.
The entire idea of the sanctity of human life to those who support abortions is a moral one, yet we have laws protecting the health and welfare of our citizens. No one protests these laws on the grounds that any belief in the sanctity of human life should not be used as a basis for making laws.
Abortion is a moral issue, therefore the government has no business prohibiting abortion and women should have the right to end their pregnancies — so the argument goes.
An unborn child is a life. And because unborn children have been stripped of their rights, Jan. 22 is not a day for rejoicing, but a day to reflect on how little human life is valued.
Ten years later
Roe vs. Wade decision opened door
Picture this. You are a 29-year-old woman with two children, aged two and four. You work as a clerk-typist for the University of Kansas, bringing in less than $11,000 a year. In two weeks, your husband's $163-a-week unemployment benefits will run out and your paycheck will be the sole support for your family of four.
Even if your husband is to find a job tomorrow, you're not sure you could afford day-care, which could run between $300 and $500. Maybe you should just give up. Else, and then, you find out you're pregnant.
If that scenario doesn't fit, try this one. You are a college senior with one semester left before you graduate. After graduation, you will move to Kansas City to look for work in your field.
Right before midterm, you discover you're 10 weeks pregnant. It's difficult to attend classes because you (feel sick to your stomach) much of the day and the grades fall even further.
Your world seems to be dropping out from under you. Like the working woman in the first scenario, you don't have the money to raise a girl you are 22 years old and not ready to be a mother
Thanks to a courageous woman known only as "Jane Roe," if you don't want to carry this pregnancy to full term, you have the option of choosing a legal and safe abortion. Roe, who was unmarried at the time of her pregnancy, sued the state of Texas after she was forced to bear a child she didn't want because Texas outlawed abortions.
Roe took her case to the U.S. Supreme Court and on Jan. 22, 1973, 10 years ago last Saturday, the justice ruled that the decision to have an abortion up to a woman and her physician, not the state.
Since the Roe vs. Wade case legalized abortion in all states, American women have had about 10 million lawful abortions. Studies show that before that landmark date, American women underwent anywhere from 200,000 to a million illegal abortions a year.
some in the offices of doctors who were willing to break the law. Others in damp, hidden away basements that invited infections. Many were performed by the desperate women themselves who used coat hangers and boiling-bot water baths to free themselves from the problems of bearing an unwanted child. Many died in doing so.
In 1968, the President's Crime Commission reported that an average of 350,000 women a year suffered complications from botched illegal abortions. Commission members also estimated that about 5,000 women died each year from illegal abortions.
They were performed in a variety of places.
Constitutional amendments declaring that life begins at the moment of conception, therefore
KATE DUFFY
making abortion murder, have been proposed by such conservative stalwarts as Sen. Jesse Helms, R.N.C., and Rep. Henry J. Hydre, R-Ill.
These ridiculous amendments were never passed by Congress, but right-to-abortion supporters say they are still always on their guard.
The so called right-to-life abortion foes argue shrilly that abortion is murder. They also argue that women don't bother to use contraceptives because they can get an abortion too easily. And they say that if a woman is so sloppy about her pregnancy, she becomes pregnant, she deserves what she gets.
For abortion to be murder, the fetus would have to be considered a human being. There is no consensus in religious, scientific, legal or political communities that this is so Most of the Christian churches are being The Roman Catholic Church, which teaches that a fetus is a human being at
conception, did not declare abortion a mortal sin until 1899.
There was little social stigma attached to having an abortion until the 1880s, when many states passed legislation against it. But that was during a time when states were passing other health-related laws, and abortions in the 19th century were definitely dangerous and unhealthy.
Contrary to what abortion foes claim, women do not have abortions because they are easier than using birth control devices. All it takes is one look at contraceptive packages to know they are not foolproof. One study showed that one out of four women who get abortions so because they are in the process of delivering Ness, director of the Kansas office of the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Another reason is just plain economics. Fifty-three percent of 200 women polled at a women's health center in New York last year were married, the most important vale in their decision to have an abortion.
Economists say that raising a child from birth to age 18 can cost around $250,000.
Ness is rightfully upset by anti-abortion groups who chastise women for wanting to have legal and safe abortions. Those people, she said, don't care much about that women can't make their own decisions.
And if abortions were outlawed, Ness emphasized, the effects on the economy and women's personal finances would be disastrous because women would have a percentage of women in the working force now.
Even 10 years after the Supreme Court's ruling, legalized abortion cannot be taken for granted. Although polls over the last 10 years consistently have shown that between 65 percent and 85 percent of Americans are able to make the choice, our legislators are constantly besieged by anti-abortion groups.
But as history has shown, women will continue to have abortions, legal or not. Outlawing abortions again would send us straight back to the days when we used mission operations that proved fatal to so many.
Choices available before pregnancy
Pro-choice and pro-life and on and on and on
Listening to all the yowning yackery and righteous cluck-clucking on both sides of the abortion issue, an average person has to wonder — are these people blind, or are they just stupid?
Why, in an educated society with access to effective methods of birth control, do there have to be any abortions at all, save those few required when contraception fails?
Abortion has become a national escape from the darker side of hedonism — the unfortunate aftermath of careless, irresponsible and just plain sexual habits.
Since the cultural revolution of the 1960s, sex has moved from the shadows to the fore of the American experience. There is nothing wrong with that. Sex is beautiful, a lot of fun and good exercise. It is high time this magical human act emerged from the arcane and distorted haze of centuries of repression and rightfully took its place in the sun.
result of failed contraceptive devices? Of course not
Instead, our society chooses often to ignore such a basic fact.
But alongside this new sexual freedom there should exist a basic responsibility for one's actions, and an understanding that the final outcome of an attitude could be the birth of another human being.
In 1973, there were 615,831 abortions nationwide In 1979, that figure had grown to J.238,987, according to the National Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, and who knows what the figure was for this year. Is this increase the
It is the result of ignorance and laziness. These are not acceptable excuses. Nor is religion, or any of the so-called reasons for such inert behavior as the temptation to monkey们. We have minds as well as sex organs.
Information on contraception is widely available in schools. There are all kinds of birth control methods available.
BONAR MENNINGER
these, the pill, has been proven safe after exhaustive, well-documented studies, according to Nancy Binkin, a doctor at the Atlanta center. She said that in some instances, the pill has actually been proven to help prevent some types of cancer.
And with any luck, male contraceptives will soon be available. That's good, because the responsibility for unwanted pregnancies rests just as heavily on men as it does on women. Men often attempt to pressure or persecute women to have sex, minimizing the risks involved. The women in their little no thought to the long-range consequences, and assume it not their problem.
Unwanted pregnancies are everyone's problem. Society pays financially for abortions and pays and pays to support families in which the fetus is not born, but out of bumbling, blind, animal experience.
The individuals involved pay psychologically. The most strenuous pro-abortion cannot deny the emotional cost that is extracted when the body is surgically invaded, and the guilt which men have to feel for their part is not too soon in fading.
The question as to whether abortion is a moral issue is not even relevant to the argument. It is, in fact, a matter of logic and common sense, and it is bitterly ironic that the same voices that oppose abortion also condemn sex education and contraception in any form.
And are not the voices that shout for abortion guilty of debasing their own intellects by evading the issue behind the whole premise of 'choice'? Or are they the only voices before abortion becomes the only alternative
Both of these groups, certainly concerned about their fellow human beings and apparently interested in shaping a better future for society, would do well to pause for a moment and listen to the sound of their own rhetoric bouncing off of their walls they have so diligently constructed.
If these people do intend to be true to their ideals, they should join forces in an all-out effort to educate the public on the fundamental need for birth control.
Letters to the Editor
Lifeline column ignored obligation to help the poor
To the editor:
I believe that Bonar Menninger missed the point about Lifeline in his Jan. 19 editorial in the Kansan. First of all, despite overwhelming statistics, I am not convinced that there is a consensus against Lifeline. I suspect that the majority of people believe that while its supporters remain unfortunately silent.
Furthermore, Menninger says that people should have "the opportunity to give and feel good about giving, as opposed to mandatory generosity. But keeping people alive and happy is important," something that one should contribute to in order to feel good, or to assuage a guilty conscience.
It is a moral responsibility which demands a social program like Lifeline, plus generous support.
Glenn Schwerdtfeger
1204 Orend
of considering ourselves beneficent because we filter down a few spare dollars to "the poor."
As a "hard science" academic scientist, I was dismayed to read the front page article by your staff reporter Don Henry. It would seem that by picking the he book he quoted, he hopes the faculty will favor classified research on this campus. Henry only quoted people against the faculty, not the students. The research and do not have that option. (I doubt if English or philosophy professors anywhere in this country do classified research, cutting edge or otherwise, in their fields.)
Research pluses overstated
Those who he quoted in favor were people who have the option of doing such research or not. Their kind of work is done not only at the laboratory but also at their laboratories as well. They have many options.
Faculty in our department are doing unclassified "cutting edge" research, experimental and theoretical high energy physics, space plasma physics, and astrophysics to name but a few. Perhaps Prof. Roskam said "hard engineering" fields.
Henry may have quoted Prof. Roskam correctly, if so Prof. Roskam knows better than to say 'In the field of hard science, all the data at the cutting edge is classified.' This is not true.
Finally, it is not true that more research
"money really does . . . help students." Classified research money will produce a class of privileged students; those who are privileged to know about all of the research being done on campus but cannot talk about it to any but others so privileged.
The other side of that coin will be those students who may not know about all of the research being done here, but can talk to anyone about any of what they do know. To divide our students (and faculty) into two such classes simply for the professional advantage of a few so-called soft scientists and engineers who have other research options is a diethoxy we do need.
J. P. Davidson
Chairman, department of physics and astronomy
Letters Policy
Bob
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters.
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