Newspapers / Daily Tar Heel (Chapel … / Jan. 20, 1984, edition 1 / Page 6
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6The Daily 1. t i irv on 100 Walking for life 9 1st year of editorial freedom Kerry DeRochi, Editor EDDIE WoOTEN, Mamijiino. Editor CHARLES ElLMAKFR, Associate Editor Kelly Simmons, University Editor KYLE MARSHALL, State and National Editor Michael DeSisti , sport Editor. Melissa Moore, News Editor FRANK BRUM, Associate Editor Michael Toole, City Editor Karen Fisher, Features 'Editor Jeff Grove, Am Editor CHARLES W. Lf.DFORD, Photography Editor MIA Campus elections are scheduled for less than one month from now, and Student Government finds itself minus one Elections Board. Without such a board, both the accuracy arid, the timetable of the February elec tions are seriously in doubt. For that reason, Student Government must realize the importance of a smooth-running election and make immediate efforts to appoint new members to the board. Chris Cox, the board chairman appointed by Student Body President Kevin Monroe last October, resigned late last semester for personal reasons, but little positive action has been taken by Monroe to replace Cox or the other board members in the nearly two weeks since students returned from Christmas break. Without prompt action on the part of Monroe, the elections stand a good chance of being postponed, a situa tion that would be unfair to the many candidates and their campaign workers : as well as to the dozens of "lame duck" student workers who have made commitments for other activities in mid to late February. Quick replacement of the board is necessary to ensure a smooth run ning election. The board is in charge of every aspect of the elections, from the selection of poll tenders to the programming of the ballot counter. Cox said Tuesday that the selection of poll tenders alone could take from two to three weeks. . While executing an election may seem fairly simple in concept, some Elections Boards in the past have found the job so difficult that they stag ed practice mock elections in order to ensure that each elections official completely understood the rules and processes of the balloting. Three years ago, poll tenders at several sites on campus were riot properly in formed of balloting rules, and charges of major polling irregularities cause a near re-vote for the close races of student body president and Dai ly Tar Heel editor. Five years ago, election irregularities threw the whole process into the Student Supreme Court, postponing administrative turn overs until mid-March. Similar calamities cannot be risked this year by a slow Elections Board appointment. Candidates have spent hundreds of dollars and many hours on their campaigns. They are serious about the positions they seek, and it would be unfair for the present Student Government administration to make light of their candidacies by dragging its feet on the needed appointments. The candidates and the campus as a whole deserve a smooth February election. It's up to Monroe to make sure they have one. That year is here There's an interesting, but not all too surprising, addition to bestseller lists these days. Up there with such literary giants as Stephen King and James Michener is an old-timer, the late George Orwell. His novel 1984, the story of a tptalitajian future, is now the fastest-selling book in the United States, with people across the nation buying either paperback or . hardcover editions at a rate of 50,000 copies each week. Orwell himself may not be around to enjoy the residuals from the new flurry of interest in his novel, but the fact that a generation nurtured on the likes of Sidney Sheldon and Judith Krantz are turning to Orwell would seem to be good news. There is, however, a danger in all the attention 1984 is receiving in the year to which its title refers. Its meaning is misconstrued by many and manipulated by many others. Those to the political right claim Orwell's frightening vision represents the danger posed by some of the policies of those to the left, while those to the left counter with precisely the same criticisms. The concepts of Big Brother and Newspeak, both haunting elements of Orwell's totalitarian world, have become such common terms in the English language that they are often used incorrectly or hyper bolically. Some cynics seem hell-bent on seeing Orwellian prophecies come true in present-day America when, in truth, our society has by no means degenerated to a level near the nadir of human affairs depicted in 1984. 1984 must be seen for what it is a compelling piece of literature and an accurate assessment of what could happen should certain elements of human nature go unchecked. One can only hope that the thousands, maybe millions, of Americans now giving Orwell a more eager glance will receive an education, not a distorted and dangerous paranoia, from reading 1984. By DAVID FAZIO and TRACEY ST. PIERRE The father has syphilis and the mother had tuber culosis. They have had four children the first one was blind, the second one died, the third was deaf and dumb, and the fourth one had tuberculosis." The mother is now pregnant with her fifth child but is willing to have an abortion if you determine she should. What would you decide for her? . If you chose abortion, congratulations. You just mur dered Ludwig Van Beethoven. (Medical History from R.C. Agnew, USC Medical School, quoted from July August 1981, Last Days Newsletter). The pro-life movement, on the basis of scientific evi dence and spiritual convections, stands against the merci less slaughter of innocent children that plagues our land today. Science confirms the uniqueness of human life from conception on. Evidence reveals that the child's heart starts beating between 14 and 28 days after conception (usually before the mother knows she's pregnant). Brain waves can be read by 43 days, and the child can move his. or her arms and legs by six weeks. By 1 1 weeks, the baby is breathing (fluid), sleeping, waking, dreaming, fasting, digesting, urinating, having bowel movements, feeling pain, reacting to light and noise, and is capable of learn ing. By 11 weeks every organ that a person will ever have is already functioning; nothing else is added except nutri tion. Medical advancements have been known to save premature babies as young as 18 weeks. The Hippocratic Oath, an oath physicians have taken for centuries, is still found in hundreds of doctors offices and hospitals across the country. Part of it reads: "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and art." Today, the present abor tion laws make a mockery of medical science and state ments such as the Hippocratic Oath. Coinciding with medical evidence, abortion is also morally wrong from a Judeo-Christian perspective. It is clearly stated many times in the Bible that we are indi viduals created by God's design and known by him prior to birth. The Lord's eyes are in every place watching the evil and the good, and he sees the 1.5 million innocent lives destroyed by abortion every year in America. This has been the case since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand and denied the rights of the unborn in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. In comparison, the Supreme Court ruled in the 1857 Dred Scott decision that black people were not "legal people." God certainly recog nizes black people as human beings, although the Supreme Court did not; he also recognizes the unborn as human beings, although the Supreme Court does not. Often times, pro-abortionists seek to justify abortion by citing arguments for cases of rape and incest, overpo pulation, and unwanted children. Here are some facts that show the deceptions behind their arguments. Fact: Pregnancies from rape and incest are extremely rare less than 1 percent of all abortions are performed for these two reasons combined. A study of one thou sand rape victims who received immediate medical atten tion reported that no pregnancy resulted. An excuse that covers less than 1 percent of all abortions cannot logical ly justify the other 99 percent. The overwhelming ma jority of abortions are done purely for the sake of con venience. . Fact: The birth rate in the United States has been sharply declining for the past 30 years. Some experts pre dict by the year 2000, half the population will be over 50 and a third over 65. As far as food shortages, Professor Donald Boque in Time magazine estimated that the world's facners could theoretically feed a population 40 times as Targe as today's. Also if the present day world population assembled in one place, we could all live within an area the size of Texas. Fact: Every year in America, thousands of couples wait to adopt children but are refused because there are none available. In 1980, North Carolina alone had 5,000 couples who wanted to adopt but were left childless. In the Chapel Hill area, according to the Department of Human Resources, 42 percent of all pregnancies in 1980 ended in abortion. In response to this present situa tion in our community and the country at large, the Chapel Hill Sanctity of Life Committee has organized a VWalk for Life" to be held on Monday, Jan. 23, begin ning at noon in the Pit. Similar walks will be held throughout the nation, along with the "March for Life" in Washington, which is held each year in protest of the 1973 Supreme Court decision. The purpose of our walk is not to agitate an already sensitive and volatile issue; instead, we will walk in a silent, prayerful manner in order to call public attention to this most serious problem in our community and na tion. Nor is the purpose to condemn those involved with abortion but to express our loving and prayerful concern for all individuals touched by difficult pregnancies. In conjunction with the walk, the movie The Abortion Clinic will be shown in the Union's upstairs lounge on Sunday, Jan. 22, at 7 p.m. Join us as we stand up for the life of the unborn. Dave Fazio, a junior English major from Indian Trail, ri and Tracey St. Pierre, a senior journalism and political science major from Charlotte, are members of the Chapel Hill Sanctity of Life Committee. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Doctors should go back to school To the editor: Donna Turner's influence must indeed be far-flung for an article covering her talk on abortion last semester to have spurred a trio of abortionists to put pen to paper at this late date. I am referring to that gem of misinformation, "Doctors on abortion and birth control" (DTH, Jan. 12), signed by Drs. Hendricks, Gray and Ewing. Two of the authors, Hendricks and Gray, perform abortions themselves and thus have a vested interest in defending the abortion industry. All three authors failed to attend Turner's speech in per son. Their common perspective is thus Clouded. As one who has neither a per sonal stake in abortion nor a closed mind when it comes to hearing people with dif ferent opinions, I would like to respond to the points raised by Hendricks, Gray and Ewing. The trio claims that the military has never encouraged abortion. Any woman who has served as a member of any branch of the U.S. armed forces and wound up pregnant during her tour of duty can testify to the falseness of this statement. The male military hierarchy routinely harasses and puts pressure on female soldiers to abort. The reason is obvious: A mother who goes on a month long pregnancy leave .. nd then has the responsibility of caring for a child is less able to contribute time to military service than a mother who aborts and returns to active duty after three days. The doctors posit that the chances against a woman getting pregnant on four consecutive occasions while faithfully taking the pill are "too astronomical to contemplate." Even so, whether or not the odds are "astronomical" for any one individual depends on that individual's reproductive system, as any true doctor devoted to healing patients rather than butchering them would know. The trio's assertion that abortion does not adversely affect a woman's future reproductive capacity is also untrue. The "authorities" cited by Hendricks and friends in support of this contention are notorious for their pro-abortion bias. For instance, the Alan Guttmacher Institute is nothing more than the research arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and Hogue, Cates and Tietze are all known abortion proponents. A much more objective review of the sub ject was published by the New York State Department of Health in 1980. That study compared the subsequent pregnan cies of 20,296 New Yorkers who had aborted their first pregnancies to a like number of women who had carried their first pregnancies to term over a six-year period, from 1971 to 1977. The results in dicated significantly higher rates of low birth weight, labor complications and miscarriages for the second pregnancies of women who had previously aborted than for the second pregnancies of women who had not previously aborted. The study concluded that "a woman who has an induced abortion is likely to ex perience poorer reproductive outcome in a subsequent pregnancy." The doctors claim to "know of in stances in which a therapeutic abortion almost certainly prevented a planned suicide." This claim is sheer speculation unsupported by studies which indicate that pregnant mothers as a group, in cluding those refused abortions, are far less likely to commit suicide than any other cross-section of society. According to the University of Minnesota Maternal Mortality Commission in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 98:356-367, 1967, between the years 1950 and 1965 in Minnesota, pregnant female suicides averaged 0.6 per 100,000 popula tion. Non-pregnant female suicides averaged 3.5 per 100,000 and male suicides averaged 16 per 100,000. And ac cording to Ottosson in Legal Abortion in Sweden (1971), between 1938 and 1958, out of 13,500 Swedish women who were refused abortions, only 3 took their own lives. Drs. Hendricks, Gray, and Ewing ap pear to be ignorant of a great many things concerning abortion. Chris Kroner Carolina Students for Life Pe- m -M m -mw A-'" 1 m.m 1 2 i m L.va if a m mm m h a hko. m mm m a m m IIA6ETT1N6 WORRIEP ABOUT THESE SMALL, INPEPENPENT PHONE SYSTEMS,,, For the record Thursday's editorial, "License to kill", incorrectly reported that a San Francisco mayor killed in 1978 was a homosexual. In fact, it was the city supervisor, killed at the same time as the mayor, who was the homosex ual. The DTH regrets the error. The Daily Tar Heel Editorial Assistants: Bill Riedy and Gigi Sonner. Assistant Managing Editors: Joel Broadway and Amy Tanner News Desk: Tracy Adams, Joel Katzenstein and Sheryl Thomas News: Tracy Adams, Dick Anderson, Diana Bosniack, Keith Bradsher, Amy Branen, Lisa Brantley, Hope Buffington, Tom Conlon, Kathie Collins, Kate Cooper, Teresa Cox, Lynn Davis, Dennis Dowdy, Chris Edwards, Kathy Farley, Steve Ferguson, Genie French, Kim Gilley, Heather Hay, Tracy Hilton, Andy Hodges, Melissa Holland, Reggie Holley, Sue Kuhn, Thad Ogburn, Beth O'Kelley, Janet Olson, Rosemary Osborne, Beth Ownley, Cindy Parker, Donna Pazdan, Ben Perkowski, Frank Proctor, Linda Queen, Sarah Raper, Mary Alice Resch, Cindi Ross, Katherine Schultz, Sharon Sheridan, Deborah Simpkins, Sally Smith, Mark Stinneford, Carrie Szymeczek, Amy Tanner, Wayne Thompson, Vance Trefethen, Chuck Wallington, Melanie Wells, Lynda Wolf, Rebekah Wright, Jim Yardley and Jim Zook. Sports: Frank Kennedy, Michael Persinger and Kurt Rosenberg assistant sports editors. Glen na Burress, Kimball Crossley, Pete Fields, John Hackney, Lonnie McCullough, Robyn Nor wood, Julie Peters, Glenn Peterson, Lee Roberts, Mike Schoor, Scott Smith, Mike Waters, David Wells and Bob Young. Features: Clarice Bickford, Lauren Brown, Tom Camacho, Toni Carter, Charles Gibbs, Tom Grey, Marymelda Hall, Kathy Hopper, Charles Karnes, Joel Katzenstein, Dianna Massie, Kathy Norcross, Amy Styers, Mike Truell, assistant features editor. Arts: J. Bonasia, Steve Carr, Ivy Milliard, Jo Ellen Meekins, Sheryl Thomas and David Schmidt, assistant arts editor. Photography: Larry Childress, Lori Heeman, Jeff Neuville, Susie Post, Al Steele and Lori Thomas. Zane Saunders, assistant photography editor. Business: Anne Fulcher, business manager; Angela Booze and Tammy Martin, accounts receivable clerks; Dawn Welch, circulationdistribution manager; William Austin, assistant circulationdistribution manager; Patti Pittman and Julie Jones, classified advertising staff; Yvcttc Moxin, receptionist; Debbie McCurdy, secretary. Advertising: Paula Brewer, advertising manager; Mike Tabor, advertising coordinator; Laura Austin, Kevin Freidheim, Patricia Gorry, Terry Lee, Doug Robinson, Amy Schultz and Anneli Zeck, ad representatives. Composition: UNC-CH Printing Department Printing: Hinton Press, Inc. of Mebane. THE WEEK IN REVIEW Debate sparks race By KEITH BRADSHER The first debate among candidates for the Demo cratic presidential nomination turned into a confronta tion Sunday when Walter F. Mondale's rivals accused him of making vague and unrealistic campaign pro mises. The former vice president angrily grabbed the floor, shook his finger, and assigned pricetags to his proposals after Sen. John Glenn accused him of using "the same gobbledygook of nothing we've been hear ing throughout the campaign." ' Sens. Gary Hart, Alan Cranston and Ernest Hollings joined Reubin Askew and the Rev. Jesse Jackson in attacking front-runner Mondale. Only George McGovern defended Mondale's host of promises to numerous interest groups. "America is nothing if it isn't promises," he said. "That is what America is about." 1 11 I its ijj Held at Dartmouth College, the debate injected some heat into a race rendered dull by Mondale's sub . stantial lead in opinion polls. Mondale seems less hampered by his ties to liberal interest groups and former President Jimmy Carter than are his rivals by their respective weaknesses. Hollings and former Florida Governor Askew labor in obscurity when outside the South. McGovern can not shake his has-been air. Cranston and Hart, re spectively the oldest and youngest candidates, have failed to mobilize their mutual target, the nation's young. Jackson has yet to attract a large white fol lowing and is not universally supported by blacks. Mondale's closest rival, Glenn, remains crippled for lack of a strong organization and is hurt by the primary schedule. What Elections Board? Will the present Campus Governing Council become known as the Long Parliament of UNC? As of Thursday, Student Government was without an Elections Board to run campus-wide elections schedul ed for Feb. 14. Chris Cox, the last Elections Board chairman, resigned for personal reasons at the end of last semester. Cox served only two months in the posi tion, communication problems between Student Body President Kevin Monroe and Cox having caused Cox to miss several Campus Governing Council meetings scheduled at the start of the semester to consider his appointment. The delay forced a three-week post ponement in elections held to fill vacant CGC seats. According to the Elections Laws, the Elections Board must have petitions available by next Tuesday and must hold a compulsory candidates meeting on Feb. 4. Further, Election forums have yet to be scheduled, poll tenders recruited or balloting machines programmed, Cox said. Openness Will a judge select an impartial jury even when the public is not allowed to watch the process? A federal court panel thought so, and on Monday upheld secret jury questioning in the trail of nine Ku klux Klansmea and Nazis charged with violating the civil rights of Communist Workers Party members shot during a "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro Nov. 3, 1979. Eight state newspapers went to court after U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Flannery decided to close the courtroom during the interviewing. of prospective jurors. Attorneys for the newspapers maintained that a history of open-trial proceedings should be pre . served. U.S. Justice Department attorneys argued that a likelihood existed of pretrial publicity prejudicing prospective jurors. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Court of Ap peals took about an hour to reach a decision in favor of the government. The newspapers are appealing to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger for an emergency stay, but in the meantime, secret selection of jurors pro ceeds. A U.S.-Soviet Thaw? Will the Soviets join President Reagan in trying to thaw U.S.-Soviet relations? The initial Soviet reaction to Reagan's generally conciliatory speech Monday was discouraging. Reagan, declaring that "1984 is a year of opportunities for peace," seemed to shed his moralis tic anti-communism. "The fact that neither of us likes the other's system is no reason to refuse to talk," he said. Three years of rapid military buildup have put the U.S. in a strong position to seek peace, Reagan said in his speech. The Soviet press agency Tass, however, scorned Reagan's speech as "basically of a propaganda nature" and accused him of an election-year attempt to shed a warlike image. When on Wednesday, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. GromykQ addressed a 35-nation conference on easing East-West tensions, he delivered a blistering attack on U.S. policies. Later the same day, however, he met at length with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, the first high-level, U.S.-Soviet contact since November. "The discussion was a good one," U.S. officials, said. Admission Requirements In a move aimed at improving the preparation of college freshmen, the UNC Board of Governors plan ning committee has approved and recommended a plan forcing high school students to complete 20 specific units of study before they may enter any of North Carolina's 16 state universities. No longer will a high school diploma or the equivalent be sufficient. The 20 units must include four English courses, three math courses (two levels of algebra plus geometry), three science courses (one biological, one physical, and at least one with a laboratory) and two social studies courses (one in U.S. history, the other in government and economics). Now is a good time for the step because universities and high schools in the state are working well together, HOTt Chairman F.rdrn aid. Objections to the proposal focused on the risk of hurting minority recruitment. None of the presidents of the predominantly black universities in the system strongly dissented, however, said UNC system President William C. Friday. Keith Bradsher, a sophomore economics and political science major from Arlington, Va.t is a staff writer for The Daily Tar Heel.
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Jan. 20, 1984, edition 1
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