Daily Nebra&kan
Friday, March 11,1983
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As one of this administration's more disturbing
gestures to the New Right (which has felt, for no apparent
reason, that Reagan mctamoiphosed into a squish)' liberal
as soon as he took office), federally supported clinics
may have to tell the parents of minors when their children
are using bitth control.
1 he new Reagan rule was supposed to take effect
I eb. 25, but a New Voik federal diMiict c art judge.
Henry F. Weiker, threw the "squeal rule' out because it
violated Congressional intent. J uttbei couit action will
decide whether the Worker decision Micks.
'I he squeal mle was bom about a year ago. when
social consei vaties in Congress couldn't get a law through
winch would have banned federal funds for clinics pro
viding family planning serice. Their retrenchment was
this: "To the extent practical, entities whkh receive
grants or contracts under this (law) shall encourage family
participation in piojects assisted under this (law )."
Ibis passage, part of the Public Health Service Act.
was vague and unobjectionable; who could disagree
with it? But Richard Schweiker, the former Secretary
of Health and Human Services notable mainly for how
quickly and intensely he became conseivative after
Reagan pulled him from nowhere in 1976, used this
bl.md woiding to miplement the squeal rule. Under
the proposed n:!e, paients of gnls under 18 would be
notified within 10 days after any form of bnth con
trol was issued to them.
Since the regulation was pioposcd for comment about
11 months ago. 120 000 people wiote in to Health and
Human Services about it; all 38 state agencies which took
u position on the Mile objected to it. The reason is simple
enough: without the secrecy guaranteed by the famih
plan.! ting agencies, there would be moie abortions and
moie unwanted chiiJien bo:n.
In a Planned Parenthood survey three years ago. 25
pescent of the teenageis questioned said they would
stop asking for contiacepties if their parents were told
- but only 2 percent said they would stop haing sex.
George Will, who favors the squeal rule because his 2
v ear-old daughter Victoria may not alvvavs say "No!"
with such, vigor, implies that teenagers should not have
sex anyway. ". . . Adolescents have a third choice between
contraception and pregnancy," he writes. "It is continence."
But this is surely missing the point. Whether or not
minors should have sex with one another, they, of course,
do and will, Each year mote than 600,000 females under
18 go to the federally supported clinics like Planned
Parenthood, and the squeal rule is not going to change
the pi act ice of ai! these people, but nly the preention.
"We have bum a Beilin wall between the kids and the
parents." said Schweiker in putting the rule in force.
But would the new rule make families any more com
muiiicaiive? By putting one more piece of power m
the hands of parents, and taking one more resource aw ay
fiom teenage children, a situation develops in which
sons and daughters will separate themselves further from
paients.
It will be interesting to see what the new Secretary of
Health and Human Services, former Massachusetts Rep.
Margaret Heckler, will do with the squeal rule. She was
one of 32 members of Congress who wiote a letter against
the squeal rule. So far she has said nothing about it. Time
will tell which comes first : common sense or politics.
I'm not too optimistic - unemployed members of
Congress tend to be very grateful.
Eric Peterson
Ei Salvador quaesfibois
4J
wM? Wto cares?'
My son has just left the "it's not fair"
phase of his life for one that has not yet
announced itself. Before things were
constantly not fair, though, they were
crushingly unimportant. This was his
"so what'? who cares9" phase and he said
that so often that in my house it was
w in niiip mm in.
,
I :1 V 'i Richard
Cohen
" I ..
called by its initials - "SWWC." This
is just one way you save time in a house
hold with two careers and lots of plants
to water.
The old SWWC came back to me the
otiier day when it was announced in
various places that, unless we granted
El Salvador another S60 million in mil
itary aid, it would fall to the "rebels,"
a word the State Department uses to mean
commies. When that happens, Honduras
will be next and then, to the south,
Panama, and to the north, Mexico. That
not only moves the Red Menace closer to
home, but imperils some pretty terrific
' reaches.
!y now of course, you recognize that
..his .c. '-Mario under another name is the
uid Domino Theory. It was revived
recently by Assistant Secretary of State
Thomas Enders and his deputy, Nestor D.
Sanchez," and seconded by Sen. Henry
Jackson (D-Wash.), who also thought the
Red Tide, like Killer Bees, had to be
stopped in EI Salvador, lest it lap upon
the shores of Mexico.
Someday someone is going to explain
why dominoes arc supposed to topple
only one way, to the left, and why it is
that we can not get them to topple our
way, to the right. And then, when that
is explained, that same person will also
have to explain why the dominoes did
not fall as they were supposed to in South
east Asia. If the Vietnam War proved
anything, it was that countries really
are not dominoes. Vietnam toppled and
with it Laos and Cambodia, but they
were already engulfed in what amounted
to the same war, while Thailand, Burma
and the rest of Southeast Asia remain
standing tall.
But none of that has to do with SWWC,
which assumes that El Salvador does
"fall" and then some other Central Amer
ican countries do, too. It is at this point,
if you are asking questions, that you have
to ask if not both "So what?" and "Who
cares?'', then at least "So what?"
I ask that not out of callousness and not
without realizing that the agrarian
reformers now in the hills may turn out to
be as brutal as the h ombres now in their
various presidential palaces, but because
there is an assumption that all these states
would be little Central American dupl
icates of the Soviet Union.
But would they? Would El Salvador
be Marxist like the Soviet Union, which
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is our enemy? Or would it be Marxist like
China, which while not quite a friend,
certainly is not an enemy although it was
(look it up) the reason we fought in Viet
nam. Maybe these Central American states
would be Marxist like Yugoslavia, which
is neutral, or maybe they would be Marxist
like Albania, which for a while aligned
itself with the Soviet Union and then
later with China and has now decided to
disappear down a European black hole.
And even if ail the Central American
countries should go communist, does
that mean that we have to kiss the Panama
Canal good-bye? Cuba is not only Marxist,
but hostile as well, and yet we maintain
a naval base at Guantanamo Bay. As
hostile as the Cubans are, they dare not
attempt to take the base, although this
is one lease that will not be renewed.
The administration cautions us thjt
El Salvador is not Vietnam, and thev
are surely right in this. It is a different
country in a different region and neither
Congress nor the American people will
allow it, in terms of either troops or
funds, to become another Vietnam.
But El Salvador is like Vietnam because
it is an attempt to control from Washing
ton events taking place in remote hamlets,
to see a regional struggle only in teims of
east-west rivalries and, last, to once again
prolong a war in which we have no vital
self-interest.
Those were the lessons of Vietnam and
it is no improvement to do the same
thing over again, only this time without
American troops. People will still die,
some of them through no fault of our
own, but some of them because we once
again knee-jerked to the word Marxist
and failed to ask, among other questions,
"So what? Who cares?"
(c) 1933, The Washington Post Company
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mt job imteraew conqmieirs fihe fidgety stojidefflt
Job interviews : the time of reckoning when college is
just about over and the rest of your life is at stake. They
are kind of like waiting in the lines at St. Peter's gates,
where everything is behind you, yet you are totally
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Brian
Stonecipher
helpless for anything that is about to happen. It is a real
moment of truth when you are, for that moment in time,
not in control of your own destiny. I've been through
this experience once during my first interview, and it's
an experience I don't want to go through again. Here's
why.
"Hi, I'm Mitch Williams. Have a seat," the smiling
interviewer said to me.
I went in and sat down in the small, stuffy room.
Straight across from me sat a strange man who had
complete control over my future; a man who could give
me a job, security and big bucks to pay back my student
loans. Saying that this man was important to me would
be an understatement.
He started out asking the standard opening line, "Well
Brian, tell me about yourself."
I became fidgety. Even though he didn't say it directly,
I could see in his eyes that he really wanted to grill me
about my grades. I was determined to deny him the privil
ege of talking about grades for as long as possible. So I
started in on my original game plan - the interview stall.
"Uh, well ... I was, uh, gosh," I started. What a
vocabulary. I go to college for four years and when I
need my education the most, the first words that come
to mind are the same ones that I used when I was three.
What a waste of 17 years of school.
"Urn, ... I brought along this portfolio thing which
has some supporting material which is referred to in my
resume," I said. "I think it shows that I'm not the typical
'number-crunching weirdo engineer,' if yoirknow what I
mean. Ha, ha." I waited for his response to my forced
humor. He just kept staring at me with an expressionless
face. He didn't like my bad jokes.
I went ahead and emptied the scrapbook material
on the desk. Photos, letters, news clippings and cub scout
patches spilled into this important man's lap. I had an
impressive list of materials to show him : my grandma's
"What a fine young man you are" birthday letter and
eight consecutive days of police reports, with the actions
I was totally responsible for highlighted in yellow. But
he didn't seem too interested.
"That's very interesting," he said as he shoved the
material back toward me. "But let's talk about something
else, like your coursework and grades."
I was in real trouble now. He had not only taken
control of the interview, but he was also headed for my
grades. I wanted to shout "NO - LEAVE ME ALONE.
I DON'T WANT TO GO THROUGH WITH IT ANY
MORE" and storm out of the room, but I didn't.
I was in a suicidal "oh who cares" mood and decided
to go through with the rest of the interview.
Continued on Page 5
