VOL.100,NO.34 (USPS 650-640)
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
THURSDAY OCT.12,1989
ADVERTISING:864-1358
NEWS: 864-4810
Abortion forces clash on issues in debate at KU
By Derek Schmidt Kansan staff writer
If the debate last night was any indication, abortion will be a hot topic when the Kansas Legislature meets in January.
"We'll do whatever we have to to stop the slaughter of abortion," said Barbara Rew, a member of Kansas Right to Life.
She said anti-abortion forces would press for an amendment to the Kansas constitution, declaring that life begins at conception.
Pro-choice forces said they would be ready for the onslaught.
"Pro-choice has switched 'from passive to active voice,' said Sarah Trulove, Kansas chairman of the Unified Coalition for Abortion Rights.
The abortion factions predicted the upcoming legislative battle last night after an abortion debate at Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union. More than 100 people listened to the pre-choice and anti-abortion forces debate the issue. The event was sponsored by the KU Democrats.
Truelove said pro-choice roques were planning a march on Nov. 12 in Toulouse.
"It will show the Legislature their jobs are not imperiled if they vote pro-choice," she said. She predicted that parental consent bills and financing for abortions at the KU Medical Center would be the most prominent abortion issues.
Rew said, "The Supreme Court was wrong in the past when it ruled the Black man was not a person, and it is wrong now." She argued that the umbront fetus was a human busing and deserved protection by society.
"We oppose pro-choice because no one may be given the choice to kill," she said.
But pro-choice advocates said abortion did not constitute killing.
"A heartbeat and brain waves do not make a baby," Trulove said. "It is potent emotion. The intention must be made by the individual, based on moral and ethical principles and free from government interference."
Joseph Hughey, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the representative for the Pro-Choice Action League, said women sometimes chose abortion because inadequate social programs and a lack of access to healthcare medical care could be worse for the child than never being born.
Mary Ann Grelinger, a member of Kansas Right to Life, rejected that argument.
"It's a diabolical contradiction to say you have to kill somebody
The debate occasionally drifted into tangential issues, such as birth control.
"We should be teaching our teenagers chastity rather than handing them contraceptives," Rew said. "Giving them contraceptives is like locking up your Ferrari and saying, 'Don't drive it, but in case you do, here are the keys.'"
The pro-choice group disagreed. "Birth control is the obvious solution to the abortion problem," Hughey said.
The debaters also discussed the rights of the father in a decision to abort a pregnancy.
Trulove said the father should be consulted but should not be part of the decision.
"The child is 50 percent his and he has no rights," Rew said. "That doesn't sound pro-choice to me."
Kevin McKinnev, left. and Brad Douglas, the Pigeon Vision Brothers, perform their act at the Renaissance Festival, which closes Sunday
The groups both drew analogies with the genocide of Nazi Germany, each side comparing the other's position with German atrocities.
"I Ultimately, it's the woman who bears the child" she said.
Debaters also clashed on statistics about the safety of abortion, with pro-choice forces saying it was safer for the mother than childbirth.
The proceedings occasionally turned emotional. At one point, the anti-abortion group held up a picture of an unborn fetus. Later, an anti-abortion audience member got into a shouting match with Hughey.
Renaissance men bring laughter to present
By Mark McHugh Kansan staff writer
Two KU Renaissance men have found that living in the past is not an easy task.
“It’s a tremendous strain sometimes. You can’t live in the future if you’re living in the past,” said Mckinney, McKinney, Lena sophmore.
McKinney and his partner, Brad Douglas, Shawnee freshman, make up the two-man act, the Pigeon Vision Brothers, a bawdy commentary on life in the 16th and 20th centuries.
The two attended high school at Shawnee Mission Northwest, where they performed in "Oklahoma" and "Auntie Mame". McKinney, who always had an intense interest in British humor, in a comedy troupe in 1987. He asked Douglas to join him in the fall of 1988, and they performed in an act called The Conjery, which was a storytelling show for children.
Their show can be seen Saturday and Sunday at the Renaissance Festival in Bonner Springs. The festival ends this weekend.
"We did stories and acted them out," Douglas said. "We had morals in our stories. We sort of made them corrier this year."
their 20-minute show mainly on what they have seen on Monty Python shows and other BBC productions.
"Comedy is kind of a social commentary, and they did it the best," said McKinney. "It's a philosophy, and I believe heavily that performance is a philosophy."
Douglas said that the nature of British and U.S. comedies differed, but that this did not make one type of humor better.
"There are cultural differences. In any country, there are going to be cultural differences," Douglas said. "If you look at American comedy and British comedy, you can tell. It's just a different type of humor."
McKinney and Douglas base
The Pigeon Vision Brothers
always try to hark back to the Renaissance, which lasted from the 14th to the 16th century. Sometimes this is not so easy.
"The other day we had an airplane fly overhead, and we started hailing the Trojan Pigeon."
"We work with what happens. Out here it's a lot different than contemporary theater because here you actually interact with the people," Douglas said. "You don't know how they react so you adjust your show."
McKinney, who writes their scripts, also gave the Pigeon Vision Brothers their name.
"It's the answer to life, the universe and athlete's foot in about 20 minutes," he said.
House eases abortion limits
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The House agreed yesterday to allow federally paid abortions for poor women who are victims of rape or incest, reversing nearly a decade of more restrictive votes and inviting a veto from President Bush.
By a 216-206 vote, the House rejected the language it has kept in the law since 1981 and instead endorsed a more liberal provision already passed by the Senate. An effort by conservatives to reverse the vote then failed. 212-207
Yesterday's vote came three months after a Supreme Court ruling gave states greater powers to restrict abortions. Lawmakers and activists who say women have a right to an abortion have argued that that
Federal aid for abortions, available under Medicaid, is now limited to poor women whose lives have been endangered by a pregnancy.
"The political momentum on this issue is so strong now that if President Bush vetoes this, he'd be making a big mistake," said Rep. Barbara Boxer, D-Calf., who led the fight for the eased limitations.
ruling spurred supporters of their position to make their views known to their legislators.
But Rep. Henry Hyde, R-III., who has led the anti-b abortion fight in the House for years, said, "I couldn't characterize it any other way than as a defeat for the unborn. I was surprised, upset and disappointed."
The provision adopted by the House would allow Medicaid payments for abortions when the mother's life is in jeopardy or when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. Since 1981 and as recently as Aug. 2 the House has voted for language limited federal aid to abortions in cases in which the woman's life was in danger.
The abortion provision is part of a
$156.7 billion measure to finance labor, health and education programs for fiscal 1980, which began Oct. 1. The spending bill, which was approved 364-56, now moves to the Senate.
Bush threatened in August to veto the bill if it contains the more liberal abortion language. Administration bills reiterated that threat this week.
Just one disagreement remains to be settled between the two chambers before the legislation goes to Bush — whether to accept a Senate proposal to ban federal aid to programs that buy hypodermic needles for intravenous drug users unless the president certifies that the effort helps prevent the spread of AIDS.
The bill also contains more than $1.5 billion for AIDS research and treatment; $4 billion for job-training programs; $1.9 billion for alcohol, drug abuse and mental health programs; $1.17 billion for welfare programs, and $2.1 billion for education for the handicapped.
The vote was the second abortion showdown in the House since the Supreme Court's July 3 decision in the Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services case.
On Aug. 2, the chamber voted to dramatically liberalize abortion restrictions in the District of Columbia. That was the first time since 1980 that the chamber had rejected tighter limits.
The August vote was considered less politically risky than Wednesday's because it affected only residents of the nation's capital, leaving unchanged federal laws that affect the whole country.
Like most congressional debates on abortion, Wednesday's fight was raged over the rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus.
"Rape and incest is a tragedy. Nobody says it isn't," said Hyde. "But why visit on the second victim, the unborn child that is the product of that criminal act, capital punishment?"
See ABORTION, p. 6
Senate challenges alcohol-awareness bill
By Lara Weber
Kansan staff writer
Protecting lives or protecting rules and regulations became the debate at last night's Student Senate meeting.
BACCHUS, a campus alcohol awareness organization, submitted a bill to the Senate asking for money to help start a designated driver program among Lawrence clubs and taverns. But the bill was quickly challenged for violating Senate rules.
The bill requested $420 for plastic cups to be distributed during Alcohol Awareness Week, Oct. 30-Nov. 4. The cups would be used by designated drivers, those who decide not to drink alcohol, and those who drink the cups, they could receive free non-alcohol drinks at participating bars in Lawrence.
The controversy arose when it was revealed at a Senate Finance Committee meeting last week that the
Senate rules state that the Senate is not permitted to allocate funds to reimburse an organization.
The Senate decided to adhere to a definition of "embrymental" as, "a form of theatrical expression."
BACCHUS leaders said it had been necessary to place the cup order earlier to get the cups in time for Alcohol Awareness Week.
BACCHUS appealed to the Senate to suspend its rules in this case to support their effort to promote responsible drinking.
1,400 cups had been ordered but hadn't been paid for.
In this case, money had not actually been spent, but the Senate determined that losses had been incurred when the cun order was placed.
"If there's any rule that's justifiable for change it's this one," said Frank Harwood, member of BACCHUS. "If you can save a life, isn't it worth it?"
"Suspending the rules is unnecessary," said Aaron Rittmaster, off-campus senator. "Other options haven't necessarily been explored. Suspend rules only when you have no other options."
Senators expressed general support for BACCHUS' plans, but some questioned the need to suspend Senate rules to give the group money for the cups.
Michael Diggs, off-campus senator, disagreed. "I think in this case we can make an allowance for a group that will be beneficial to the campus."
A motion to suspend rules and regulations to consider allocating money to BACCHUS failed, and the bill was withdrawn
After the bill was withdrawn, BAC-CHUS leaders discussed options with Senate leaders in an attempt to find a way to finance the designated driver cups.
"The designated driver program won't be as effective without the use of the cups," Harwood said. "Our options are getting limited very quickly."
Susan Sadecki, president of BACCHUS, said that she realized that they had broken a rule and that they wanted to find the best way to resolve the situation.
At the end of the Senate meeting, Pat Warren, Finance Committee chairman, announced that the Board of Class Officers had agreed to consider providing the $420 for the cups, pending approval of all the BOCO members and of Ann Eberson, director of organizations and activities.
"I believe that responsible drinking is important to everyone on this campus," said Greg Hughes, junior class president. "It would be a shame for this to go unfunded. That's why we're supporting it."
Friday the 13th scares some computer owners
Kansan staff writer
By Travis Butler
Kenspen staff writer
Students with IBM and IBM-compatible personal computers need toware this Friday the 13th.
Several computer viruses are spreading that will erase all files on infected computers when the computers internal calendar reaches Oct. 18.
Computer viruses are small programs that can spread from computer to computer, just like biological viruses. Their effects can range from the benign — such as printing "booga boogal" on the screen — to the malignant, such as erasing a disk and all the information on it.
At least 11 viruses are going around that are set to go off on or after Oct. 13, according to a list available from the University of Kentucky. All of the reported Friday-the-13th viruses affect IBM PC's and other MS-DOS machines.
An April survey by Academic Computer Services showed 260 IBM PC-compatible machines in use by departments on campus. It did not identify the compatiable units then or PC compatibles owned by students.
Any of these machines could have been infected by one of the Friday-13th viruses, but there is no way of knowing how many actually have been, said Doug Heacock, a technical writer for Academic Computing Services at KU. These viruses are somewhat larger than usual user, and nobody knows how many computers have been exposed, he said.
A virus is typically spread by an infected program that a computer's user innocently picks up from somewhere, such as from a friend or a computer network, he said. When the infected program is run on a computer, it will infect other files on that computer, usually either other program files or system files.
Alan Amesbury, Lawrence fresh
At least 11 viruses are set to go off on or after Oct. 13.
man, is not too concerned about a virus attack.
"Yes, I've done things that could expose my computer to a virus attack," he said. "A virus that would my hard disk would be pretty critical.
"But I'm not really worried about them. I've got a good virus-guard program."
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has put together a list of tips users can follow to reduce the spread of infection. The most important are:
▶ Make frequent back-ups of your data. Copy important files onto floppy disks, and keep the disks in a safe place.
Use only software obtained from reputable sources. Be cautious of software from public sources, such as software bulletin boards.
► Don't let others use your computer without your consent.
Use care when exchanging software between computers at work, or between your home computer and your office computer.
There are at least two free programs that can detect the most common Friday-the-13th viruses, according to reports on a national website. The other is called Viruscan, and the other is called NoCrime 1.1.
Heaceck said that Academic Computing Services would try to obtain these programs and have them available for users today. Interested people should contact the academic computing office at Academic Computing Services.
The consulting office also has more detailed information available on viruses, as well as disks of virus elimination programs for PC compatibles and Apple Macintoshos.
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