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Wednesday, June 26, 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Abortion rights
Louisiana law may foreshadow overturning of Roe
T the passage of a tough abortion law in Louisiana last week signals the beginning of the end for abortion rights in this country.
Because of this law and others like it, the Supreme Court soon will be in a position to reverse Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 decision that established those rights. This blow against individual freedom will set an ominous tone for the 1990s.
The law allows abortions for rape and incest victims only within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. It also burdens rape victims with a requirement that they report sexual attacks to the police within a week.
The Louisiana legislature voted to override Gov. Buddy Roemer's veto of the law, which bans abortions except to save the life of the mother or, under strict guidelines, in cases of rape or incest. Doctors performing illegal abortions will face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $100,000.
There is little logic in this - a rape that is not reported within 7 days is still a rape.
The law will not take effect until 60 days after the legislature adjourns, and its opponents are moving in court to stop its enforcement. Antiabortionists hope that such legal challenges will propel the issue to the Supreme Court, where their agenda can be carried out on a national level.
But a Pennsylvania abortion law most likely will beat Louisiana's to the Supreme Court.
Since a 1989 Supreme Court ruling, restrictive abortion laws also have been approved by legislatures in Utah, North Dakota, Idaho and Guam.
Bush's appointee, David Souter, is a strict constitutionalist, liberal on some issues but conservative on others.
The court probably will not uphold Roe vs Wade. Thanks to the efforts of successive Republican administrations, it is leaning further and further to the right.
He apparently does not see the right to abortion as a guaranteed right in the Constitution. Just last month, he voted with the majority when the court upheld the Bush administration's ban on abortion counseling at federal, financed family shopping stores.
The court's present lineup includes four liberals on women's rights issues — Harry Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor and Byron White.
Blackmun and Marshall, two of the court's oldest members, are trying to hold out until a more liberal president is in office. They may not be able to hold out long enough.
And time already may have run out for Roe vs. Wade.
Mike Brassfield and Liz Kennedy for the editorial board
Financing Hoch's restoration may call for some creativity
rms means that it did not have insurance bat, but because it was a state owned building, the state could sue if it were damaged. Yeah, right.
let me get this straight: Hoch was self-insured, right? This means that he did not
It seems that insuring state buildings is too expensive. Isn't that inherent in the concept of insurance? I find it ironic that a state that people to have insurance for their cars depend require itself to insure its buildings.
We should all be given the option of self insuring our cars. If my car were self insured, I'd make sure I had lightning rods attached to it.
The estimated cost of rebuilding Hoch is $12.8 million. Given the fact that Campaign Kansas probably has tapped out most of our rich alumni, failure will not be easy to reach. We can get creative about raising money
We could give Sally Struthers of "All in the family" fame) to help. Now that she's branched out into commercials for trade shops, I think this would be an opportunity time to employ her services. She broke a lot of hearts in those hungry-children advertisements, and I think a couple
Michael Christie
Staff columnist
of well-planned but sincere tears could help KU raise some dough.
Or, depending on how badly we need the money, the University could sell grades for, say, two semesters. For $1,000 you could earn 15 credits of at least 1,000 students here would go to that $1,000 a good start.
As a part of enrollment, every student could be required to sign something which would obligate her or him to sell plasma for Hoch until the money was raised. Selling blood always has been a good standby for students in need of cash; let's just expand on that idea. If 25,000 student patients for this mission we印印 we could save $735 a week. You can sell plasma once a week; it is blood that you have to wait eight weeks for.
We could put a surcharge on certain things around campus — the word "like," for instance. One dollar
for every time it is used incorrectly Like, is this fine thing, you know, like for real? Two bucks, please.
And, if all the above aren't acceptable, then we could try something really fun. Kegger at the chanceler! s! For too long, we poor students who aren't campus bigwigs have been relegated to walking past the sidewalk and racing from the sidewalk inside the sometimes drapery-pulled windows.
Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. Let's open up the place. The thought of drunken show tunes being played on the beautiful piano, which I can see when I walk by is so cool that I want to make me want to hand over at least $10. Slowly, we could start to rebuild Hoch.
It could work. You could end up a semester with straight A's, looking like a human Swiss-cheese from needle marks, grateful to Sally Struthers and drunken, singing "Surry with the fringe on top" at Gene A. Budig's house, all the while having aided the restoration of Hoch Auditorium. Truly fun with a purpose.
Michael Christie is a Shawnee senior majoring in journalism.
Dallas' golden extravagances are tarnished with cheesiness
dible gold
E When I first heard of this Dallas treat, I thought, "Gee, now there's a concept. If you can't spend it. eat it."
The fine flakes of gold can be sprinkled in mixed drinks, placed on cakes and designed in chocolates.
I could not figure out why anyone would want to eat gold. I could think of at least a million other things to do with money — many just as stupid but with a little more material gratification.
Tiffany Harness Staff columnist
Thus, one of my early lessons in what Dallas life is about was complete. Those who have money in this country are not likely to And those who don't have nothing.
Staff columnist
There are some things about Dallas that are wildly exciting; its pace, its skyline illuminated with bright neons, and its people from so many different ethnic groups. (That's certainly not to say they are living together in perfect harmony, but at least they are represented.)
And then, I look around and think this town suffers from an acute case of cheesiness topped with outrageous expense.
The expressways. Road signs read, "Don't mess with Texas." I am told
For example:
that this started as an anti-litter campaign. But by the glint in drivers' eyes as they speed past the signs, they think we need serve as eco-boosters.
General night-life: I have noticed that the cool thing to do is to rent a limousine for the night. I have seen people hanging out of limo sunroofs, clinging to bottles of champagne. Safe? Yes. Out of control? Complete. This isn't just one in-a whilething. We're talking fleets of
My theory is that the drivers see my Kansas plates and decide to give the outsider a bit of an orientation, because I have seen some of the drivers on the road every day. The speed limit is 50 mph, but I guess that's just a suggested limit.
Domestic beer: $7 a bottle. Bargain pitchers can be had for a mere $1. I guess Lawrence, where $5 sometimes you through the night, has spilled me,
limos.
Confederate pride: Actually this is a sticky topic. Someone said to me, "So you're a Yankee."
You know, I'm not really sure how to answer that. First of all, I did not participate in that particular war, but a) I am African-American, and b) that would make them Confederates, and proud of it. That flag hangs everywhere. The argument is that if the South lost the heritage of the South Yeah, right. Call me crazy, but I think there's a little bit more behind it.
Tired Kansas jokes: "So, do you know Dorothy and (too?)." Worse than that are the "innocent" little inquiries. I have been asked whether we have bars in Lawrence and whether I have seen buffalo roam. It's not as if these people are from the coast and can afford to contrast cultures. This is Texas, for crying out loud.
"Well, you're not in Kansas anymore (snort, snort)," someone recently said to me.
Now that's original. And true.
Tiffany Harness is a Hutchinson senior majoring in journalism and African-American studies.
Have an opinion? Want to share it? Write a letter to the editor. Better yet, write a guest column. They can be mailed or delivered to the Kansan newsroom 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. Include name, address and telephone number.
Soviets mend history
Other Voices
By a healthy majority, voters
Anyone who doubts that the people of the Soviet Union are several steps ahead of their president, Mikhail Gorbachev, need only consider the results of the Leningrad referendum in the Russian elections.
chose to turn the clock back 67 years, correct an egregious historic wrong, and restore Leningrad's original name. St. Petersburg, thereby communitized to the famous memory hole. Good for them.
Bolshikwe map: Stalnigand has been Volgagrad map since 1962, but Gorky is Nizhy Novgorod now, and Kalinan is ancient Tver once more.
The list goes on; there's a lot more to undo.
The Russians are redrawing the
Payoffs must not entice Kansas to accept out-of-state trash
From The Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin
A New Jersey company recently started hauling New York trash to the McPherson County landfill. Officials in Linn and Elk counties are considering lucrative offers to accept trash from the eastern United States. And, after an emotionally charged meeting, the Greenwood County Landfill rejected a proposal to take Florida trash at the county-owned landfill.
*For years, East Coast garbage haulers have pushed west in search of open land to dump trash. No garbage frontier has reached Kansas.*
As the law now stands, states cannot discriminate between trash they produce and trash shipped from elsewhere, except at government-
Nancy
Landon
Kassebaum
Guest
columnist
owned landfills. Courts have ruled that only Congress has the power to regulate these interstate shipments. Congress must use that power.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is considering measures that would let states stop incoming garbage. Last year, I voted to require that waste from the Senate but stalled in the House of Representatives. In testimony June
Despite having the nation's best recycling system, New Jersey now must ship thousands of tons of trash to the U.S. as Indiana, Kentucky and Kansas.
18. I told committee members how important this issue is to Kansans.
Senators from eastern states also testified at the hearing. Frankly, I sympathize with states such as New Jersey. For years, New Jersey had to import trash from nearby cities in other states, such as Philadelphia and New York. State leaders tried to force the state into the same legal obstacles that we now face in Kansas. Their landfills filled.
If we keep taking imported garbage, eventually we, like New
Jersey, will run out of landfill space. Then the garbage frontier will push farther west. The only real solution is to tackle our national solid-waste problem, and that will require sacrifice. It will require efforts nationwide to generate less waste and recycle more.
The 102nd Congress will consider comprehensive waste-management legislation. Those of us from less populous states stand ready to help our more populous neighbors ease their garbage burden — but not by assuming it. States that export trash have known there would be a day of reckoning. Yet, trash shipments have increased, not declined.
Economically depressed areas in our state face tempting offers to
become dumps for-hire. For example, a Chicago company offered to pay Elk County an estimated $1.4 million a year to ship out-of-state trash to an old quarry. That is more than the county's entire operating budget. We know about long-term environmental dangers, but the money is tenuializing.
Unfortunately, when the landfills are full and the payments have stopped, the garbage still will be there. Forever.
Interstate trash haulers promise prosperity to depressed rural areas. But these companies are not philanthropists concerned about the rural waste problem. Garbage is a byproduct of prosperity, not a precondition for it. If trash
were an economic blessing, exporters would keep it.
We must ensure that when negotiations to bring garbage into a state begin, that state has a seat at the bargaining table. We must ensure that more than short-term local interests of either exporter or owner—or more than one—must be satisfied. We must adopt a comprehensive national waste-management policy.
But as long as there are cheap landfills, there will be incentive to ship trash and bury it rather than confront our national waste problem. Therefore, our priority must be giving states the ability to protect them from climate change by gassing garbage on the frontier, self-defense is the first order of business.
KANSANSTAFF
MIKE BRASSFIELD Editor
Editor
JENNIFER SCHULTZ Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
Editors
Campus/Sports Chris Otter
Associate Campus... Amy Zamerowski
Photo Editor Timothy Milleer
MarkdownKinchico
Copy Chief Chris Siron
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Business Staff
...Dave Habiger
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