THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VOL.100.NO.98
THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
ADVERTISING: 864-4358
WEDNESDAY FEB 21, 1990
(USPS 650-640)
New abortion bills introduced
NEWS:864-4810
By Rod Griffin
Kansan staff writer
Editor's note: this is the second of two articles about state bills requiring parental notification for abortion.
TOPEKA - The House State and Federal Affairs Committee heard testimony yesterday from opponents of two bills that would require parental notification before an abortion could be performed.
Because of the large number of people who wanted to address the committee, a second day of hearings was required.
Gov. Mike Hayden and State Rep. Artie Lucas, R-Highland, each introduced a bill. Hayden's bill defines a minor as being younger than 16 years old. Lucas' bill would establish 18 as the age of consent.
Hayden's bill also includes a provision for a judicial bypass, which would allow parental notification to the court that a person who does not include such a provision.
Pro-choice activists gave emotional testimony yesterday in ppposition.
Bill Bell of Indianapolis, Ind., said his daughter died because of a law in his home state much like the proposals here. The law in Indiana and Missouri would require parental notification before an abortion could be performed on a minor.
He said his daughter, Beth, died of hemorrhaging caused by an illegal abortion. She could not get a legal abortion because she refused to notify her parents.
Winter plan gets support from pro-choice activists
By Rod Griffin
Kansan staff writer
TOPEKA — An abortion bill introduced by State Sen. Wint Winter Jr. R-Lawrence, dwr support which may from Pro-choice activists
testimony on the bill yesterday.
The Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee heard
"Our support is due to the many positive things that are accomplished by
Wint Winter
complised by the bill," said Marilyn Harp, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas.
Winter's bill would make abortions illegal if a physician judged the fetus to be "viable," or capable of sustained life outside the womb. The bill would not establish a time that a viability test must be performed.
"This important step underscores that this type of legislation is possible, without a large degree of government interference into the physician's medical practice or the woman's control over her body." Harp said.
The bill also would eliminate the requirement that three doctors approve an abortion. The Hos vs. Kush law that Kansas law unconstitutional.
"In confiding with her best friend she said, 'I don't want to disappoint my mom and dad,'" Bell said. "'I love them so much.'"
"It is startling to be researching this area of law and find all that is
unenforceable still on the books," Harp said. "It is just a step in cleaning up the book."
The attorney general would be responsible for enforcing the bill in both civil and criminal cases.
"There is no private cause of action which would allow an individual, whose sole goal is to be disruptive, to file an action to prevent the lawful termination of a pregnancy," said Jodie Van Meter, lobbyist for the National Organization for Women.
But Pat Goodson, a representative of Right to Life of Kansas, did not like the bill.
"We have a problem with the concent of viability." she said
abnormalities even if the fetus was judged as viable. But State Sen. Ben Vidricksen, R-Salina, questioned the lack of a definition for a severe abnormality.
"Physicians are not interested in disrupting the life of a fetus that is viable." Van Meter said.
Peggy Jarman, a representative of Women's Health Care Services, said a bill that would prevent public funds from being used for abortions was assigned to a committee with six members who sponsored one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the history of Kansas.
He said parental notification laws forced young women who came from abusive families to get illegal, back alley abortions.
But despite their support for the bill, pro-choice activists did not think the bill would become law.
Doctors also expressed concern
"My daughter's fate was decided by others, thus denying her a safe option," he said. "These restrictive and inhibitive women are the young women of Kansas."
The bill would allow abortions if a fetus was found to have severe
about the lack of a provision to deal with girls who come from dysfunctional or abusive families.
"As a mother of three teenage children, I don't quibble for a minute about the need for parents to know what their children are doing," said Anne Wigglesworth, an obstetricologist from Chattanooga. "But if we were taller, we're going to tell both parents, we're going to lose them."
Charlotte Elder, a registered nurse who lectures at high schools, said
families dealt with decisions such as abortion in different ways.
when government interferes and makes a non-verbal family verbal, a verbal family be quiet, and a dysfunctional family be functional the fragile family mechanism is thrown off," she said.
Committee Chairman Ginger Barr,
Kubus said she would not support
their plan.
Supreme Court has not supported parental notification bills lacking the provision.
"If we parents want to get involv ed, we have to do it ourselves," she said.
Barr said that the bill she would support would be Lucas' but it lacked a judicial bypass provision. The U.S.
Barr said that without interference from legislative leadership, the bills probably would die in committee.
"If the committee is left to work the bill without any outside influence, I don't see either of them coming out of committee," she said.
Modrow pleads for immediate unification
The Associated Press
E. and W. Germanv
EAST BERLIN — East German Premier Hans Modrow, pressed by mass emigration and a crumbling economy, appealed yesterday for immediate reunification talks under a formula worked out with the Allied victors of World War II.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl, West German chancellor, urged Modrow's government to create a social security system as generous as West Germany's as a means of stopping the flight.
More than 400,000 people have left the East for West Germany in the past year.
Kohl met with West German industrial leaders yesterday to draft plans for solidarity with East Germany and told journalists that his government should help finance unemployment benefits and pensions for East Germans.
He was vague about the degree to which West Germany would underwrite the costs of East Germany's transition to capitalism, however, saying only that Bonn could provide start-up financing for the benefits.
Inflation may rise; recession not likely
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan yesterday expressed "guarded optimism" that the country could avoid a recession this year, but his warnings on the dangers of accelerating inflation
helped send financial markets into a tail-spin.
Setting up a potential clash with the administration, Greenensburg, a central bank was looking for the
economy to grow at a rate far below the one on which the administration
Wall Street, which has been battered this year by rising foreign interest rates, took Greenspan's inflation warnings and growth forecast as further evidence that the central bank is intent on pursuing a tight money policy to battle inflation and thus will not move anytime soon to lower interest rates.
At mid-afternoon, interest rates on long-term government bonds had jumped sharply while the prices, which move in the opposite direction, fell as much as $18 a $1,000 in face value. The Dow Jones industrial average of 30 stocks was down more than 38 points at the close of business.
"We're in an area where (inflation) is in danger of accelerating." Greenspan said in his appearance before a House-Banking subcommittee.
He called the performance of inflation so far this year "horrendous" although he said that January's jump in prices was attributable in large part to temporary factors stemming from severe cold in December.
But he said that the risks of higher inflation in the present circumstances were larger than should be tolerable.
In the new Fed economic forecast, the central bank projected that the economy, as measured by the gross national product, will grow at an anemic rate of between 1.75 percent and 2 percent this year, the slowest annual growth rate since the 1981-82 recession.
The administration also predicted that interest rates would drop sharply from current levels.
The Bush administration, in a forecast released last month with its 1991 budget request, forecast growth almost a full percentage point higher
KU starts infantile autism program
Students train to work with area children
Kansan staff writer
By Carol B. Shiney Kansas staff writer
Nine months ago, Karla McGlothlin's 4-year-old autistic son, Nathan, would not establish eye contact with anyone and engaged in self-stimulating behavior such as running on his ti-joes.
Tami Elkeles, Deerfield, Ill., senior, works on identification skills with 4-year-old Nathan McGlothlin.
Because of intensive behavior teaching methods, Nathan has changed.
"Nathan is not the same little boy he was six months ago at all," his mother said. "He's aware. He's part of the family now. He's learning every day."
Therapists use the teaching methods on Nathan as part of the Young Autism Project, established to research the treatment of children with infantile autism. McGlothlin, a Lawrence resident, was instrumental in starting the project.
Autism is a developmental disability that prevents individuals from properly understanding what they see, hear or otherwise sense, resulting in severe problems with social relationships, communication and behavior, according to a booklet prepared by the Autism Society of North Carolina.
"The University of Kansas, in agreeing to sponsor this program.
This month the University of Kansas agreed to sponsor the project and to set up a fund through the Kansas University Endowment Association for contributions, McGlothlin said.
has acknowledged the great need to make these kinds of services available to young individuals afflicted with autism in the Midwest," she wrote in a letter to potential donors for the project.
In the letter, McClothin said about $50.00 needed to be raised to support the initial 12 months of the
program.
After a long search for effective treatment for her son, McGlothlin moved to Lawrence in June 1983 with hopes of creating a research treatment clinic for autistic children. She wanted it to be similar to a clinic for the behavioral treatment of children run by O. Ivar
Lovaas at the University of California. Los Angeles
The UCLA clinic uses intensive one-to-one therapy, a type of treatment that had been available only in Los Angeles and Princeton, N.J.
The project will provide the children with 40 to 50 hours a week of one-to-one behavioral teaching
methods.
Thirty-six KU students are being trained to work with the children. McGlothlin said the students would get credit for courses in psychology and HDFL.
"KU is such a perfect place
See AUTISM, p. 6
Bush welcomes Czechoslovakian reformer to White House
WASHINGTON — President Bush gave investment and trade rewards to Czechoslovakia yesterday for overthrowing communist rule but told President Vaclav Havel that the United States wouldn't retreat from a precautionary "strong military presence" in Europe.
The Associated Press
He called Havel, a onetime dissident playwright who went from prison to the presidency in a year's time, "a man of tremendous moral courage, one of the heroes of the revolution of '89."
Bush gave a warm welcome to the first of Eastern Europe's new reform efforts.
The two leaders talked for $2\frac{1}{2}$ hours in the Oval Office and during lunch.
Meeting clears the way for negotiations of trade agreements
Afterward. Havel said the talks
had been "very warm, very open, very friendly," and he invited Bush to visit Prague.
Bush announced a waiver of the Jackson-Vanik amendment that restricts trade relations with compliances that inhibit Jewish emigration
The waver clears the way for negotiation of a trade agreement and the eventual award of most-favored nation trading status, which would provide Czechoslovakia the most liberal access possible to U.S. markets. In return, the Czechoslovak Parliament would have to enact a law ending the former communist government's restrictive immigration pol-
teles.
Bush also authorized the Export Import Bank to operate in Prague and said he would support readmission of Czechoslovakia to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Bush authorized sending Peace Corps volunteers to Czechoslovakia by autumn to teach English.
belongs.
Regarding military forces, Havel has called for disarmament throughout Europe and has asked the Soviet Union to withdraw the 75,000 Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia. Some Czechoslovak leaders have called for eventual dissolution of NATO, along with the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet-led alliance to which Czechoslovakia
"And America will continue to play its part, including a strong military presence for our security and for Europe's."
Bush, in the private discussions, talked at length about a need for U.S. troops in Europe and portrayed NATO as a stabilizing factor at a time of great transition, said Assistant Secretary of State Raymond
In his public comments, Bush said, "I know I can speak for all Western leaders when I say that the Atlantic Alliance will continue to play a vital role in assuring stability and security in Europe at this great and historic moment.
Seitz.
Seitz quoted Havel as saying, "There is no doubt about the stabilizing role of NATO and the United States." And he said the Czechoslovak president agreed on a need for NATO and U.S. forces until "new security structures emerge in Europe."
Bush said NATO perhaps should have a broader role than at present, Seitz said.
The official said that Bush told Havel "he did not envisage the U.S. presence going on forever and ever and ever and ever..." It was contingent on the U.S. presence being centrally welcomed in Europe and that if the United States were no longer welcomed in Europe, the U.S. forces would come home, forthwith, right away, last one out, turn out the lights."