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NORAL
Abortion: a question of affluence
The following article is written by Bev
Eddy and Carole Kimberlin, who are
associated with die Nebraskan Organization
for die Repeal of Abortion Laws (NORAL).
A march to show support for repeal of
Nebraska's abortion laws will be held this
Saturday at 10 a.m. Marchers will assemble
on the south side of the Nebraska Union and
march to the capitol for the rally.
The present Nebraska abortion law proh ib its
abortion except to preserve the life of the
mother. However, the question of whether
legal abortions should be available to
Nebraska women is, at this point in time,
rather academic. Legal abortions are
available to Nebraska women if they can
afford to travel out of state to obtain them.
Approximately 4000 Nebraska women had
legal abortions last year alone. For most of
them, it meant a trip to New York in order
to obtain a simple operation that takes
about 10 minutes and involves a recuperative
rest period of two hours. The women can fly
to New York, have an abortion and be back
in Nebraska the same day. For the poor
woman, abortion fees are waived, but the
woman from Nebraska is still faced with the
cost of plane fare. The Nebraska law, in
effect, is only serving to prevent the poor
woman from obtaining the same medical
treatment readily available to the middle
class woman.
A proposed bill which NORAL hopes to
see introduced to the Unicameral in its
upcoming session would make abortion legal
up to the 20th week of pregnancy. Abortion
would thus become a decision made solely
by a woman and her doctor during this time.
The law would also allow abortions to be
performed in any "licensed medical
facility," thus allowing for the establishment
of out patient clinics and eliminating, in
most cases, the need to pay the prohibitive
mi ices ot hospital care for abortions done in
the first twelve weeks of pregnancy.
The moral question of abortion is a more
difficult one to deal with. Many people
sincerely believe that human life begins at
the point of conception, thereby making
abortion murder. Others believe that a fetus
becomes a human being when it can exist
outside the uterus. Leaders within the
religious community, as well as those in the
legal and medical professions, are divided on
this issue. Since there are no clear-cut
answers on this issue, we believe that the
question of whether or not to have an
abortion should be one decided by a woman
and her doctor.
The fact is that restricive laws do not
prevent women from taking desperate
measures to obtain abortions. It is estimated
that a million U.S. women a year were
resorting to self-induced or back-alley
abortions before 1970. Nor is the problem
of illegal abortions limited to this country.
Death statistics for countries in Latin
America with very restrictive abortion laws
show that one of the major causes of death
among women of childbearing age is illegal,
mainly self-induced, abortions. Abortion
laws need to be evaluated not only in terms
of the rights of the fetus but also in terms of
the rights of women to control their own
bodies and the number of children they will
bear.
For many countries, efforts to control
y I
arthur hoppe
Impeach the
Supreme Court
It was in the fall of 1971 that the U.S.
Supreme Court, in a little-heralded decision,
destroyed utterly not only the faltering
economy but the entire culture of 20th
Century America.
The Court held simply that the airlines
could not practice sexua! discrimination
when it came to hiring stewardesses.
While the Male Liberation Front hailed
the ruling as a tremendous victory ("Down
with the female chauvanist pigs in the sky!"
they cried), gloomy airline executives
rightfully quivered with forebodings of fiscal
disaster.
For the fact of the matter was the the
primarey reason any businessman flew from
Point A to Point B was in hopes of seducing
-- or at least envisioning the seduction -- of
the airline employee who served him aloft.
That the airlines had come to recognize
this was obvious. Not only did they hire the
prettiest young things as stewardesses, but
they outfitted them in mini-skirts and
HotPants and then advertised their wares
with such campaigns as: "I'm Molly, fly me
to Miami!" Or wherever.
Indeed, things had reached the point
where one airline was planning to equip its
747s with not only a cocktail lounge, but a
piano player and private upstairs rooms. Of
course, that was first class. Second class
passengers would have to be satisfied with
topless stewardesses and an old-fashioned
orgy.
But the Supreme Court ruling knocked
such plans into a cocked hat. In desperation,
some airlines bravely tried to carry on by
equipping their male stewardesses (or
' "stewards," to use the newly-coined word)
with HotPants.
Nor was it all roses for the stewards.
Many quit on the grounds they were "tired
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1971
of being treated as sex objects." Those who
remained grew surly. "Coffee, tea or a punch
in the snoot, buster?" became a common
salutation.
Needless to say, air travel fell off 73.2 per
cent and the majority of airlines without sex
to sell, went bust.
While this was a body blow to the
economy, it was nothing compared to what
followed. For once the Supreme Court ruled
against sexual discrimination in
employment, the entire advertising industry
was doomed.
Who will ever forget the revised shaving
cream commercial in which a hairy
Scandinavian sailor now peeled the familiar
lime and, staring into the camera, whispered:
"Take it off. Take it ail off." The shaving
cream firm went broke a month later.
"Should a lady offer a gentleman a
Tiparillo?" left consumers, at best,
nonplussed. A hairy-legged man in short
cowboy pants crying, "Join the Dodge
rebellion!" did nothing whatever for the
automobile sales. While the new slogan,
"Does he or doesn't he?", bankrupted a
giant cosmetic firm orvernight.
But it was when a nude Joe Namath
appeared in the centerfold of Playboy that
the world knew 20th Century American
culture (and Playboy) was dead.
Without sex, manufacturers had nothing
to sell but their products. Consumers bought
only what they needed. Eventually, the U.S.
achieved a rational economy based solely on
the logical laws of supply and demand -- one
that no longer depended on creating sexual
fantasies and romantic dreams.
It was not only rational and logical,
everyone agreed, but it was as dull as
dishwater.
(Copyright Chronicle Publishing Co. 1971)
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
the population growth stems from a
desperate situation in which there is no
enough food available to feed the people
already born. The urgency of this situation is
intensified by the fact that world population
is expected to double in the next 30 years.
Because the U.S. presently has the
technological ability to raise enough food to
feed its population does not mean we can
isolate ourselves from the problems of the
rest of the world.
Contraceptive measures are, of course,
the preferable means of birth control.
Certainly, as contraceptive measures become
safer, more effective, and more widely
accessible, the need for abortion should
become lessened, but it will not be
eliminated. Women, for what ever reasons,
will continue in their attempts to obtain
complete control over the number of
children they will bear.
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