University Daily Kansan/Thursday, September 12, 1991
NATION/WORLD
7
NATION/WORLD BRIEFS
Wichita
"There can be no death if there was no live
battery," said Doug Roth, first deputy district
attorney.
Court rules on aborted fetus status
An aborted fetus is not a dead body under state law and doctors who perform abortions do not have to file reports with the coroner, the Sedgwick County district attorney's office ruled.
He cited a series of court rulings in Kansas criminal cases holding that fetuses are not considered human beings.
The ruling Tuesday came in response to a request from Dr. William Eckert, the county's deputy coroner, who said he thinks the wording of state statutes would require doctors who perform abortions to apply for permits to cremate remains of aborted fetuses. Permits are required for funeral parlor that cremate human remnants.
Moscow
Republics close to economic plan
The Soviet republics could reach a basic agreement on preserving an economic union within four to six weeks, one of the country's most powerful economic planners said yester-
But Grigory Yavlinsky, the plan's author and a member of the Soviet transitional government, said that failure to adopt the draft plan for a loose economic union of Soviet republics lead to complete economic collapse, mass unemployment, poverty and social unrest.
His statements during a news conference yesterday represented the first time a timetable has been given for passage of some form of economic union agreement.
Jerusalem
Hostage crisis may be near end
Yesterday's exchange of the dead and living between Israel and Shite Muslim extremists was a grisly spectacle. But it offered the Lebanon a glimmer of hope that the Lebanon hostage ordre is nearing its end.
It allowed two hostile and suspicious adversaries to demonstrate good faith. Israel援缓edriel pirisons and nine dead guerrillas, and the Arab side yielded the long-sought evidence that Rahamim Alsheikh, an Israeli soldier missing in Lebanon for 51/2 years, is dead.
"It's not dramatic progress, but it definitely shows that something has moved," said URI Cobb. "It could be a problem for the university."
-From the Associated Press
Thomas stays quiet on key issues
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas said yesterday that he was "very, very pained" by the thought of back-alley abortions and insisted he would have an open mind as a justice about keeping medically-safe abortion legal.
However, he declined under persistent questioning to say whether he thought the Constitution protected a woman's right to endher pregnancy.
On the second day of his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings, Thomas was immediately confronted on the issue by Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio.
Again and again, Metzenbaum pressed for his view. Thomas repeatedly refused to say how he would vote on challenges to Roe vs. Thomas and argued the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.
Toanswer that question "would underline my ability to sit in an impartial way on such a subject"
*I have no reason or agenda to prejudge the
   reason, or a predilection to rule one way or
   another.*
Thomas, who would become the second African-American justice in history, was also asked why he had criticized Supreme Court decisions upholding affirmative action programs to remedy discrimination.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., expressed concern about whether Thomas would respect the intent of Congress while interpreting civil rights laws that have long been regarded as
Thomas said he would follow the intentions of lawmakers and added that his criticisms of him were ignored by court decisions where made when he chairs Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
requiring affirmative action hiring.
But it was Thomas' views about individual privacy and abortion that most interested his readers.
"I advocated as an advocate, and now I will rule as a judge," Thomas said.
Thomas recalled that during the era when abortions were barred by law "you heard the hushed whispers about illegal abortions and other issues which hid them in a less-than-safe environments."
"If a woman is subjected to an environment like that, on a personal level, certainly, I am very,very pained by that," Thomas said. "I think any of us would be. I wouldn't want to see people subjected to torture of that nature."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., expressed surprise at Thomas' insistence that he had no opinion on the landmark 1973 abortion decision and called the case in several speeches and articles.
"I can't believe that all of this was done in a vacuum, in the absence of any clear considera-
Metzenbaum, who opposed Thomas when the Senate confirmed him as a federal judge last year, said that Thomas's refusal to vote in the question made it more difficult to vote for him. *I*
he thought Thomas handled the privacy questions very well without taking a stand on abortion. "I don't see how you could ask him to do anything more," he said.
Thomas was also pressed on whether he had undergone what Metzenbaum called a "confirmation conversion" when on the first day of his hearings he disavowed his earlier advocacy of using natural, or higher, law principles to interpret the Constitution.
Opponents say such a natural law theory could be invoked to outlaw abortion.
But Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., said
"We don't know if the Judge Thomas who has been speaking and writing throughout his adult life is the same man he is up before us or Frankly it gives me a concern."
Thomas said his writings about natural law were part of an attempt to rally conservationists against the practice.
"The issue of civil rights is something that has affected my entire life," Thomas said, referring as he hadn't Tuesday to his upbringing in a poor Black family in the segregated South.
"I was looking at natural law not as an effort to undermine or destroy individual freedoms on our society," he told Sen. Alan Simpson. R-Wyo.
Since moving from the EEC to the federal bench, Thomas said he had put away the speeches, put away the policy positions and held down his belief about natural law or any other public issue.
"I have no agenda," Thomas said. "I don't have an ideology to take to the court to do all
Thomas was not completely silent about his views on racial issues.
sorts of things."
"We all have to do as much as possible to include members of my race in society," he said. "At the same time, you don't want to discriminate against others."
"There is a real tension there. The line that I drew was the line that said you shouldn't have preferences or goals and timetables" for hiring minorities, Thomas said.
Specter said he intended to question Thomas further about why, as EEOC chairperson, Thomas opposed contempt citations against African-Americans, discriminating against African-Americans.
Simpson disputed the notion that Thomas had undergone a change of thinking just in time for the confirmation hearing and said he had by liberal groups was an act of desperation.
"You've got them. They're very frustrated by you," Simpson told Thomas.
Simpson said the repeated questions about natural law were an attempt to elevate a peripheral issue to a central issue in confirmation.
"It has been selected as an issue to con-found people," Simpson said.
Commuter plane crashes near Houston, all 14 passengers killed in fiery explosion
"He's doing a superb job. He knows exactly how to handle himself and that's what's coming through," Bush said.
President Bush praised Thomas' performance.
The Associated Press
EAGLE LAKE, Texas — A Continental Express commuter plane crashed yesterday after a fiery explosion of a wing, killing all passengers on board, according to witnesses and authorities.
The twin-engine plane crashed during a flight from Laredo, Texas to Houston, spewing fire.
The late morning crash occurred about 60 miles west of Houston, killing the occupants of Flight 2574, said Mike Cox, a state Department of Public Safety spokesman.
The Brazilian-made E-12, also known as the Brasilia, can carry up to 103 passengers in addition to its three-person crew. Another E-12 was involved in an incident April near Brunswick, Ga., that killed former Sen. John Tower, astronaut Manley "Sony" Carter Jr. and 21 others.
The airline said the plane, an Embraer-120,
carried 11 passengers, two pilots and a flight
attendant. The names of the victims were not
Witnesses to yesterday's crash said they heard explosions and saw a fireball
"I was in the field about two miles from where it landed," said Charlie Labay, 6, a rice farmer. "I heard a loud explosion. My son said, "Look, daddy, there's a ball of fire!"
"It was just spinning and just coming straight down."
blown off. It was on fire."
Cary Labay said the plane "was going round and round. The left-hand wrist off of it, was
Vance Duncan, whose family owns the ranch where debris landed, said, "It was still burning when I got there. The fire truck was already trying to put the fire out. It isn't a pretty sight."
Darius Brisco, a 41-year-old volunteer ambulance driver who was at the crash site, said he saw charred bodies within the plane's wreckage and bodies about 20 feet outside the wreckage.
A physician from Eagle Lake Hospital went to the scene, but there were no identifiable remains to be taken to the hospital, said Jim Buckner, hospital administrator.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigating team is heading an investigation.
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