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Wednesday, November 8, 1989 / University Dally Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Surrogacy bill threatening to future of legal contracts
A bill being considered in a state legislative committee threatens the stability of all legal contracts.
State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., R-Lawrence, is sponsoring a bill that would void contracts for surrogate motherhood. According to the bill, paid surrogate contracts would be unenforceable, and unpaid contracts could be voided by the surrogate or by the couple that wanted the child.
However, surrogacy would still be legal. You just couldn't make a contract for it.
Proponents of the bill say that childbearing is an emotional issue that should not be reduced to a commercial agreement. It is doubtful, of course, that any of those proponents would ever enter into a surrogacy contract, anyway.
But that hardly gives them the power to take rights away from people who want to make the contracts.
Further, legislation in this matter won't keep the problem away from the courts, which is one of the goals of the bill. Instead, surrogate mothers and childless couples will end up in court with no contractual basis for a judge's decision. The child most likely will end up with the surrogate, leaving the couple just as emotionally distraught as the surrogate would have been had she lost the child.
Instead, what the Legislature needs to do is make laws concerning how legal contracts for surrogacy can be written. For instance, a bill could require that the surrogate be given six months after birth during which she could decide, contractually, to call off the deal.
Otherwise, if the proposed bill goes through, who knows what kind of contract will be declared invalid next.
David Stewart for the editorial board
Airline smoking bill gives right to breathe clean air
Domestic airline passengers may begin to breathe a little easier, assuming a bill recently endorsed by the U.S. House of Representatives is passed into law.
On Nov. 1, the House sent a bill to the Senate that would ban smoking on all domestic flights that do not exceed six hours in scheduled travel time. If passed, this proposal would limit smoking on all air travel to just 28 U.S. flights.
This measure begs approval and hopefully will receive limited opposition. Federal government is not setting an antismoker precedent by supporting such legislation since an airplane compartment is a confining and restrictive environment.
In most instances, the non-smoker has the freedom to be segregated from the smoker, or at the minimum, has the support of health standards and federal laws that enforce the separation of one from the other.
Realizing that non-smokers cannot be totally protected from the smoke generated in a compact airline compartment that has little ventilation or circulation, approval of this bill is appropriate and necessary. Unable to avoid the smoke that looms in an airplane's passenger compartment, a non-smoker has few options and no relief.
Thom Clark for the editorial board
Air that is not affected by smoke must be a guarantee for airline passengers, and the House's efforts to ban smoking on most domestic flights is beneficial. Eventual approval of this measure does not set a precedent that is preferential to one interest group over the other, but it guarantees everyone's right to absorb air not influenced by smoke.
Members of the editorial board are David Stewart, Stan Diel, Brett Brenner, Ric Brack, Daniel Niemi, Craig Welch, Kathy Walsh, Deb Gruver, Thom Clark and Tiffany Harness.
News staff
David Stewart ... Editor
Ric Brack ... Managing editor
Darl Winnan ... News editor
Candy Niemann ... Planning editor
Stan Diel ... Editorial editor
Jennifer Corer ... Campus editor
Elaine Gung ... Sports editor
Luke Hunt ... Arts editor
Christine Winner ... Arts/Features editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
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Linda Prokop...Business manager
Debra Martin...Local advertising sales director
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Jill Lowe...Marketing director
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Carrie Slaminka...Assistant production manager
Margaret Townsend...Co-op manager
Erik Hughes...Creative director
Christian Dool...Classified manager
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Jeanne Hines...Sales and marketing adviser
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Washington is void of Mr. Smiths
In the 1939 film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," a leader of a Boy's Club is appointed junior senator when the governor, under pressure both from his constituents and his party boss, decides to appease the voters. Jefferson Smith, who is aptly named, takes the place of a "yes" man.
The theory, according to the take-orders governor, is that Smith will have no idea what is going on and will vote the way his senior senator, Joseph Paine, tells him to. The scheme is brilliant, the governor thinks. It just might work, the senior senator thinks. If he doesn't, the party boss warns. The party boss is James Taylor, and he controls most of the state politics and nearly all of the newspapers. His grin on the state is firm.
But Smith is full of ideals. He cherishes the Constitution and its representative form of government. He is full of Jeffersonian rhetoric and western state innocence. He refuses to how to bosses like Taylor. He writes his own bill for a national boys' camp. He takes a stand for himself and stands alone. The mighty muscle of the Taylor machine is against him. Phony editors, forged telegrams and hollow rhetoric almost bring about the downfall of this one man against the world.
But in the end, it is Smith's very innocence and dedication to ideals long since forgotten by his fellow senators that endear him to them. Sen. Paline, a part of the Taylor machine for 20 years, was an ally of Senator Hillary Clinton and her fraudulent past. The movie ends happily but not before the hero has exhausted himself.
One wonders whether such a story would have the same ending today. Congress is still full of party machinery. Lobbyists spend millions of dollars influencing congressmen to vote for their
David
White
Wire editor
issues. Party leaders expect junior members to vote the party line and chastise crossovers. So much time is spent in intraparty and interparty blickering that the president routinely receives one giant budget bill, which he must sign or throw the country into bankruptcy.
Certain geniuses have come up with the idea of extension bills that give the government enough money to operate until the budget for the next fiscal year, which has already begun by that time, is passed.
The deficiency bill mentioned in the movie is strikingly similar to most bills today, which are laden with "pork-barrel" projects. Today's congressman is torn between satisfying the voters, satisfying his party, satisfying lobbyists and satisfying himself. All too often, the latter is left unsatisfied.
A Jefferson Smith in today's Congress would surely be in the same position as Jimmy Stewart's character in the movie. Not much has changed in 50 years.
At the first screening, 4,000 congressmen and other government officials walked out. But these officials and the critics who saw the movie as a condemnation of U.S. democracy were off base. They assumed that Frank Capra, the director,
meant to debase their work and their positions. But their assumption was groundless. Capra loved his country and its democracy. So did Smith. The movie was not a stab but a salute.
Today can we also say that the present system is not entirely deficient. Much of U.S. government needs fixing, but its premise is correct. Most of the hearts of congressmen are in the right places. The problem is that too often, the heart is not consulted.
For Jefferson Smith, social responsibility is a shared ideal. Looking out for the other guy was at the top of his list. Facing the jaws of defeat, he vowed to fight on. He believed that he could do some good. During the movie, his understanding of the political process grows, but his patriotic zeal never wanes. He is just as determined to uphold democratic ideals as he is excited to see the Capitol dome.
The new boy on the scene grew up in a hurry, and he did not by voting the way others told him to but by speaking his mind and pressing ahead when all around him looked bleak. His words and actions are certainly an inspiration to all those who see the movie.
One wonders whether today's government officials would refuse to watch such an American classic. Most have certainly seen it or have heard of the famous fillbuster scene. It is doubtful whether some or any of today's congressmen would follow in Smith's footsteps. Those who try might find that the shoes don't fit.
▶ David White is an Atchison senior majoring in journalism and history.
Ranking cities is becoming obsolete
You probably saw it the other day: that list ranking the "most livable places" in the United States. Cities were ranked from No. 1 to No. 333.
I found it interesting that while Washington, D.C., was ranked No. 4 and New York was ranked No. 7, Midland, Texas, was listed near the bottom at No. 319; and Odessa, Texas, was ranked next-to-last at No. 332. I couldn't help thinking about what happened when 18-month-old Jessica McClure was trapped in that well in 1967 and how the people of the Midland-Odessa area banded together to rescue her. I'm sure that the people of Midland and Odessa, not to mention the millions of citizens around the world who watched TV coverage of the rescue with moist eyes and tight throats, will be intrigued to consider the fact that day-to-day life in New York and Washington is considered so far superior to the way of life in Midland and Odessa.
But that's not really the point here; the people who put the list together want us to argue about the reason for it. I have a lot of questions.
No, the real significance of the city rankings is that before long, such an exercise is going to be totally without meaning because two coming developments threaten to make the very idea of "cities" virtually obsolete, at least when it comes to the traveling public.
More and more, though, when travelers head for a distant city, they don't even set foot in the city itself, certainly not downtown. The fastest-growing segment of the hotel industry is the category of airport hotels. The reason for this is that more and more business travelers or their bosses are deciding that it is not really necessary to go literally to Cincinnati, Boston or wherever. Flying into the airport is fine; meetings can be held at an airport hotel, which saves money compared to downtown rates and saves cab costs between the airport and downtown. In many cases, businesspeople do not even have to stay overnight; several executives will fly from their district offices to an appointed city early in the morning. They will meet at an airport hotel all day, and they will fly back home at night.
Bob Greene
Syndicated columnist
This is the concept of "wayports." Wayports are being proposed as a means of reducing congestion at mega-airports, such as Chicago's O'Hare and Atlanta's Hartsfield. Millions of today's air travelers fly into the giant airports with no intention of going into town. The travelers merely need to make connections. Say you're flying from Des Moines to Dayton. You get off the plane from Iowa in Chicago and get on another plane bound for Ohio. No need for you to even have been at O'Hare, except there were no non-stops available.
Wayports would be huge airports built in what is
euphemistically being called "the middle of nowhere." The wayports would be constructed in remote wheat fields or barren plains, miles and miles from a major city. The wayports would not be anyone's origination point or final destination; passengers would only be allowed to change planes and head for somewhere else.
There are unanswered questions about the wayports. If they were located so far from cities, where would the workers come from? If passengers really were not allowed to leave the wayport buildings, what would happen during a big snow-storm?
Of course, all this could be great news for Midland and Odessa. We already know that good people choose to live there, even if the "most livable places" instormers don't understand why; Maybe Midland and Odessa could volunteer to be the sight of the first wayport. It would have to be infinitely more pleasant than O'Hare or LaGuardia.
All of this is yet to be worked out. But the combination of the two travel phenomena — business people meeting at airport hotels and never going into the cities, and travelers making connections at giant wheat-field waypoints that don't even bear a city's name — could make the concept of cities almost meaningless, except for the people who live there and have relatives there.
▶ Bob Greene is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
CAMP UHNEELY
BY SCOTT PATTY
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