VIEWPOINTS
EDITORIALS OPINIONS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Sacred Heart growth
lowers abortion access
■ OUR OPINION: Making
legal medical practices
unavailable inhibits
everyone's freedom
Th« abortion debate arises
in the most interesting
places.
Rather than being restrict
ed to the forums of when
life begins and if it should
be legal, this emotional ami
personal argument surfaced
during a funding proposal
for PeaceHualth, the compa
ny that owns Sacred Heart
Hospital.
At issue for state authori
ties was whether to approve
a request from the Catholic
Church-affiliated company
for $lfi million in tax
exempt bonds. Nov. 13. the
company got what it want
ed.
The $230,000 in savings
will Imj used by Peace
Health to expand and
improve services in Eugene
and Florence.
essential services should lx*
allowed to get.
Clearly. Sacred Heart and
its satellites provide the
community with quality
medical cart? and make the
most of modern technology.
However, as that care
spreads through the city, it
squeezes out facilities that
used to provide services that
Peace!fealth rejects.
Little by little, a legal pro
cedure is made impossible
to find. Smaller companies
that provide abortions but
rely on other services to sur
vivo cannot compote with
hi-t*M h, convenient as a 7
Llevon Sacred Heart.
This trend is nothing new.
Across every field larger
corporations are gobbling up
and edging out small, inde
pendent operations As
such, fewer peuple begin to
control what we see. read,
eat and do with our bodies
That is to say, all servit os
oxcopt abortion.
PeaceHealth bans all med
it oi procedures and coun
seling involving pregnancy
tnrmination. This is all well
and g(K)d. Private compa
nies should have the right to
determine what practices
meet with their moral or
ethical beliefs.
The bone of contention
for pro-choice activists is
that PeacoHnalth keeps
growing, making a legal
medical practice increasing
ly inaccessible.
Regardless of individual
beliefs on the rights and
wrongs of abortion, Puaco
I health's continuing expan
sion (the company recently
bought and renamed the for
merly independent Eugene
Clinic) raises difficult ques
tions about how big a pri
vate company that provides
Anti abortion activists
may applaud Peat ••Health's
expansion, but their enthu
siasm misses the point,
It is just as likely that a
powerful atheist organiza
tion could buy Eugene's
hospitals and eliminate the
small chapels where people
find solar o during the ill
ness of a loved one. A
white-supremacist group
could begin to buy all of the
city's bookstores and ban
the sale of African-Ameri
can literature. They have the
right to do it, but is it right?
Is it just?
Peace Health and the state
have crossed no legal
boundaries. But do we want
any service, any commodity,
any market to be controlled
or dominated by one institu
tion? The state and the
country should examine at
what point the right to free
enterprise begins to impinge
on the right to free choice.
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LETTERS
Might makes right?
Larry Unftl in right, of course
(ODK. Nov 10) We d all be
much happier if we could just
accept lhai the need and desire
la make war is a part of our
human nature
ll is absolutely true that our
lives would be much easier if we
would all simply rid ourselves
of the notion that the life of a
peasant in some faraway land,
with whom we really don't have
much of an obvious connection
anyway, has exactly ns much
value and dignity as our own
lives and the lives of our fami
lies, friends and neighbors.
Once we shrug this moral bur
den. we are free to eii)oy the
wonderful things available to us
as citizens of a country with a
very powerful military presence.
We know these things are ours
by the simple and logical equa
tion that might equals right
Finally, we might he able lo
find it within ourselves to offer
thanks not only to the soldiers
who preserve our way of life, hut
perhaps also to the great war
makers themselves who have
surely understood and accepted
— even celebrated — the same
facts Haiti outlined in his col
umn.
Hitler, for instance, has been
badly underrated
After all, though he was not
our enemy in a nominal sense;
he provided millions with the
opportunity to experience the
incomparable adrenaline rush
that accompanies combat, and
ho clearly appreciated the need
for population reduction in a
time of scarce resources And
look at the thanks he got
1 don't think many of us like
the idea of becoming "pacifist
victims," as Haftl suggests But
it is also very dangerous to allow
oneself to be lulled by his argu
ment into believing that we are
inevitably or “naturally" mon
sters. We accept such a vision of
human nature at the cost of our
humanity.
Karynn Fish
1994 Alum
New York City
I-firry Haiti's editorial (ODE,
Nov. 10) embodies the kind of
uninformed opinion (hat is
actually dangerous in its igno
rance.
Halil claims that “war is one
of nature's tools for thinning
the herd." He goes on to claim
that our biosphere cannot sup
port the success of our own
species, and war therefore
helps to ensure that a smaller
population has access to Earth's
limited resources
Perhaps Hah I has never seen
the desolation of once-fertile
land in Vietnam and Cambodia,
a testament to the success of the
A men can chemical arsenal
Hafll further compares the
“ethnic cleansing” occurring in
Bosnia to some supposed geno
cide of Neanderthal man at the
hands of Cro-Magnon man.
This comparison is mon
strous in its implications Is it
some sort of racial war as a
means to a higher rung in the
evolutionary ladder?
“Finally, waging war can be
an incredible adrenaline high."
Ifaftl claims Of course What is
more of a rush than killing
indiscriminately?
War is a little more expensive
than heroin addiction, but you
can get the same dizzying, life
altering highs |ust ask the sol
diers who drove bulldozers to
bury the dead at Iwo Jima. One
is my grandfather.
'Many combat veterans never
again achieve the same sense of
alive-ness that comes with
being around when the smoke
clears.” continued Haftl.
Funny, 1 would wager that
many combat veterans have a
real problem getting rid of a
pervading finding of dead-ness
after the smoko clears
Mr Haftl. war takes the
lifeblood of a nation, its young
men and women, and muti
lates. cripples and kills them.
War is glorious — just ask its
blind, its limbless, its insane
Haiti's arguments that wur
will maintain our species and
our “biosphere." that war is an
evolution of the advanced over
the inferior race, and that war is
a glorious "adrenaline high" ore
< ategoru ally, wrong.
Haftl’s article was ironically
in commemoration of Veteran's
Day, originally named
Armistice Day. The word
“armistice" refers to a truce pre
ceding a peace treaty, in this
ui.se at the conclusion of World
War I
This day is not a celebration
of war. but of its end.
Richard Oberdorfer
History
Last resort
War in response to Larry
Haftl’s column (ODE. Nov. 10),
is the killing of other human
beings. The flesh is pierced;
blood runs; the breath is extin
guished. the heart stops. Mur
der is forbidden to the average
US citizen, except in self
defense or in time of war.
It is important to get in touch
with the fact that war is killing
other people.
How about killing people
because their leader is a drug
trailer who thumbs his nose at
the U S. government? A lot of
people were killed in Panama.
Manuel Noriega is, however,
alive and well.
Does Haftl know that woman
and children are often the
majority of the victims of mod
ern warfare?
Does Haftl think the civilians
killed in f'anama were not
worthwhile human beings
because they don't have the
same culture and ethnicity as is
dominant in the United States'
Does he think we have nothing
to learn from the incredible
depth and diversity of human
cultures in our world today?
I envision a world in which
our first effort is to come to
know and understand the many
diverse peoples who share our
planet Earth — one in which
war would be the last resort
after deep and quiet contempla
tion of any problem or concent.
We are all responsible for our
acts, soldier and civilian alike.
Marion McLean
Undeclared
War hurts