UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorists represent the opinion of the Kanan
editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of
November 14. 1979
Forcing the oil issue
A federal fuel commission, which conducted a hearing in Salina this weekend, couldn't have been more on target.
Commissioners said that alcohol-mixed gasoline may be the best short-term answer to the energy shortage, but it could reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
Monday, President Carter announced he was cutting off Iranian oil imports, which account for at least 4 percent of daily American consumption. Iranian students who hold the U.S. Embassy and 62 American hostages.
Carter's action at the minimum will mean a cutoff of the estimated 400,000 barrels of crude oil daily that is brought directly from Iran, and could amount to as much as a 10 percent cutoff of U.S. oil imports.
This is where the National Alcohol Fuels Commission comes in. With U.S. oil imports predicted to go down, now is the time to be making some
decisions about the expansion of necessary energy alternatives—of which gasolol is one.
Fourth District Rep. Dan Glickman, D-Kan., who attended the hearing, recommends that more alcohol distilling capacity be developed in order to increase gasolol usage. In addition, the Department of Energy needs to request companies to make more gasoline available for gasolol production.
Although the cutoff of Iranian imports to America may not directly free the American hostages, it is an important maneuver that will not allow the Iranians to use the threat of an oil embargo as a political lever.
As Carter explained, the Iranian oil imports were cut off to "eliminate any suggestion that economic pressures require your stand on basic issues of principle."
Carter's action may also be considered as an important step toward energy self-sufficiency.
Do-it-yourself kits hurt abortion cause
To the Editor:
I cannot resist responding to Melissa Thompson's editorial on abortion kits, (1/6) and the dogmatic assertions made therein.
I don't think it's quite fair to imply that all anti-abortionists are unreasonable or overly emotional in their stance, at least not any of them. The pro-abortionists have been, or are,
Initially, pro-abortionists claimed that they should have the right to have an abortion for any reason, at any time.
Although the current "safe and legal choice" advocates don't use these same terms, I fail to see how their demands are made. The current "choice"s to be made? It is possible that not many people would quarrel with the idea of a warrior who is serious physical damage done to themselves, allowed to terminate their pregnancy; this could also include victims of rape or incest. The pro-choice's language sounds suspicious. The anti-choice's it’s applied in other contexts. I can’t believe that the burgeoning numbers of abortions based on physical detriment problems.
We can always comfort ourselves by saying that it is unfair and unwire to bring children into a world where they would face social and economic deprivation, and that the opportunities and problems have always existed, in all ages no isour is no different. What right have any of us to say or decide who shall be born and who shall not? That notion pompously attaches to the fact that there is far beyond their competence. If we recognize a right in all living people to try to make our personal and collective lives world better, on what legal, ethical or moral grounds, we decide who shall be "privileged" to come into this world for these efforts?
We can say that it would be cruel to allow children who are handicapped or retarded to be born to suffer ridicule and rejection at birth. We must respect their life, that their life is worth less than that of a normal person, and that they can make no meaningful contribution to our society? We could all learn a lesson from them with their capacity for love and compassion.
On what basis do we decide which retarded or handcapped people have the ability to see? Should we save the blind but not the deaf? On what principled basis can any woman or man be convicted of a crime?
If the above reasons are the best we have, what can be said about the rest? Should we allow abortion for the sake of more common cramped life style?cramped life style? Because we want a girl and the doctor tells us it is a boy. Because the poorest and crudest reasons of any, the poorest and crudest reasons of any,
We hear declarations that a woman's body is her own business, and that she should dress herself with skirts. If a woman wants to cut or her poke out her eyes, or her head, she thats fine. But that 'right' can be extended to other women whose heads are separate and distinct from that of the mother.
The "test-tube baby" experience in England seemed to show that (1) life impatient is associated with zygote, if left to natural processes, will become a living being, and (2) even though the zygote must be re-implanted in the mother's uterus, the fetus' fetosis is not, by any rational argument, a part of the mother's body that should be implanted. It is unclear although it is dependent on the mother for
KANSAN letters
its very life, it is an independent entity worthy of protection; that although it is dependent upon sustenance from its mother, the fact that it will die if deprived of life's essentials shows that it is much like us, as the die too, if deprived of life's essentials.
For all of the well-meaning efforts of project to an image of resource sufficiency, the notion of "free choice" (i.e. abortion on demand) seems to be a negative way to treat children. For only women can bear children, and that fact seems to require an extra measure of care for them.
The woman should take added precautions to prevent her from becoming a mother, if that is her desire. Preventing the baby one thing-preventing the baby is another.
And now there is an abortion kit for the "do-it-yourselfers." No restraint, no restriction, no abortion movement. Getting rid of an adult child is becoming as easy as taking out the garbage—perhaps there's a phone connected. It depends on the motive behind the act.
Absent any compelling justification, I. don't feel women have the unfettered right to vote. I've been taught mothers decided we weren't worth the effort? To Meilie I say this: no matter where this issue of women's fertility is decided, it must not be made more than Madison Avenn or Wall Street.
Jeff Wilson
Lawrence 1st year law student
Child's life wasted by any, all abortions To the Editor:
Melissa Thompson's article "Abortio,
defice pro-sacrifice choice" (Kansas, Nov.
6) was indeed enlightening. After reading it,
the reader will notice that the life of
(has always been an emotional issue for
me) and that we distrust the truth. Admittedly,
these accusations may well be
It also seems fairly self-evident that, as Thompson assets, home abortion kits are used to abort babies that are carefully considered before being marketed in the U.S. Again, I agree. The mother's safety is very, very important. But isn't it similar to how women come some choices and not others?
Simply because the unhappy mother performs the abortion herself does not make a difference. You can provide a presence of a doctor and or the payment of several hundred dollars make it all the more legitimate. The fact is, both procedures are expensive, and waste of an unborn child, the waste of a life.
Thompson's other major qualm was that the use of an in-home abortion kit "would support the accusations of causalism that anti-abortionists make." If I find it extremely difficult to believe why an abortion of this type can be considered any more "casual" than any other.
As to the possibly negative effect the do-it-yourself kit may have on the pro-choice cause? Well. I always hope for the best.
Overland Park junior
David Winsch
Iran lashing out in wrong direction
Tension between the United States and Iran continues to mount daily as about 60 Americans are held hostage by Iranian forces with support of the Iranian government.
The only possible solution to resolving the problem, as far as the Iranians are concerned, is to form the former Shah, Mohammed Razak and the former
In the words of the Ayatollah Ruholh Kohmei, the country and its people seem to be ignorant of the possible percussions of this current stalemate.
For example, the shah all that impersonate foreign relations must to stake important foreign relations with the United States, and possibly other countries, on the line? And is the demand worth the cost?
John COLUMNIST fischer
I doubt it. But evidently Khomeini thinks either, or isn't thinking at all.
The shah's government has been overturned and the rule of Khomeini, the chief minister of Kashmir, has been established. That is what the people wanted, and now they have it. For this reason it is important to remember that the demands for the return of the shah for his execution, especially to the extent that they are within the reach of him.
It is amazing the support the people of Iran have given to this issue. It is only too bad they can't address more serious claims that plague their stilt-north country.
While important Iranian officials claim that many people were killed by the shah, those officials also are guilty of murder. The
only difference is that now they justify their acts in the name of the Islamic religion and of Khomeini.
But the fact cannot be ignored that the shah helped to strengthen the country and make it the important nation in world affairs that it is today.
By bringing western interests into Iran, the shah helped to strengthen the country's economy, and he helped to make it more prosperous, and he made every life a little easier.
But the "savior" has done little since his return to raise the country out of its sin and strengthen it. The country is muddled in civil unrest and turnover as Khomeini executes those who stand against him—or which he does not or which the shah has been declared guilty.
Besides civil unrest and injury, the nation also suffers economic hardships. In 2014, inflation at 60 percent. Inflation stands at 40 percent. Unemployment people room the streets, hungry and poor.
The culmination of these economic challenges, the dismantling of Iranian insurrections in their country's future, as well as their own, Iran appears lost in its own confusion and turmoil.
But instead of concentrating efforts to resolve the nation's problems to get it back on its own feet, it appears all the Iranian leaders have decided that of the shah and his subsequent execution.
But by killing the shah, the miseries and problems of the country do not suddenly disappear.
Iran is jeopardizing a great deal in terms of its future by using strong-arm tactics to get the shack back. But apparently it is blind to possible repercussions these tactics.
Iran needs to forget about the alliage and, instead, concentrate its efforts on something more important to its people, the nation. The state has problems that burden and divide the nation.
Oil embargo slices Iran's leverage
President Carter's bold decision to halt U.S. purchases of Iranian oil is probably the most difficult issue for the finance. Although the decision has potentially great economic side effects, it has the larger effect of boosting American morale and of providing a nation's flagging self-confidence.
The spectre of Iranian blackmail has loomed over this country for months, like the mythical sword of Darnace. Any rumor that Iran had any sort of oil spill was greeted with pity by Americans.
John COLUMNIST logan
In order to forestall any attempts to develop a provoking policy toward Iran, we don't seem to care how our actions degraded us, just as long as the oil continued to run.
But President Carter has finally said we've had enough. He has told the Iranian government that its oil is not needed, that we need to supply very well without it, thank you very much.
It is a symbol gesture more than anything else. The oil formerly bought by the United States for its own oil other-thirst nations. Some of it may eventually find its way back to the United States by circuitous routes, but at a greatly reduced price, sufficit little, if at all, from the Carter's decision.
The United States ironically may have to pay a substantial price for its defiance of the Ayatollah. Four percent of the U.S. daily oil supply is about 400,000 barrels of oil. We will be looking elsewhere on the world market or face surface prices in the next few months.
But whether or not it has a great economic effect on the United States of Iran, Carter's decision stripped Khlomniam of one of his oil companies—the threat of an oil embargo.
Khomeini still has a number of weapons at his disposal, however. He has 82 Americans and 36 others held captive in the U.S. embassy. And he might threaten to give the settlers and other top secret weapons that were sold to Iran when the shah was in power.
Nonetheless, we still should be able to derive some satisfaction from Carter's decision. It is an act of courage that tells the world that the United States will not submit to blackmail, that we are a proud people and that our muscle under the demands of a madman.
Carrier also has challenged the American people to follow his amoral and lighthearted approach to safety. Those bad habits are the very things that have made us supplicants to the whimsical nature of the job.
One of the sharpest criticisms we have attained at our nation recently is that we don't have any more heroes--that we have no courageous and determined leader. The only heroic no, not yet at least, he is now displaying bravery and daunting conviction.
Sorority housing difficult
To the Editor.
My soriority sisters and I found your front-page headline, "ADIP issue still unsettled," to the point where I think that the issue about housing the ADP soriority members has been so exaggerated, that it is becoming ridiculous and the only thing the only seems to typify what is occurring.
What is ironic about the headline is that it is true. In many ways my sorority, Alpha Delta Pi, is still unsettled about its housing situation. this spring we hope to enrol our 135 students in these programs of 90 women. If construction is not completed by August, when school begins, we will be faced with housing a few of our upperclassmen elsewhere, temporarily. No, we will not be in a residence hall because they are not bounding, but few alternatives exist at KU.
Many other sororities also are faced with mating problems. Every year more women go to mating programs, and they modulate their sororities must expand. My sorority has been fortunate enough to have a male mating program in the project. But for those sororities who cannot build orclose not to build, other solutions
Bringing AOPI on campus is one solution. I wish them the best of luck. They have a difficult year ahead with negative publicity. Their situation is not ideal for any party
Marcia Talty
President, Alpha Delta Pi
Omaha, Nebr., senior
involved. I only hope that everyone will put aside what happened and support them wholeheartedly.
Fair solution likely in sorority conflict
Recently there have been several Kanan articles and letters to the editor concerning his work in the School of Law in a university resident hall. Mitri Edenman's letter of November 6 clarified
10 ONE EDITOR
We, the Panhellenic Association Executive Council, can understand the concern of those in residence halls about the potential threat from the members of Alpha Omicron P1, however, are feeling some personal attacks against them. The national organization outake some time ago.
A commitment has been made to this group and it must be honored. We are confident that through negotiations, an equitable solution can be reached.
Alpha Omicron Pi is a vital addition to the KU sorority system, and we hope that the student body joins us in welcoming this new student fraternal organization.
Panhellenic Executive Council
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