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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 10, 2005)
Oregon Daily Emerald Monday, January 10, 2005 NEWS STAFF (541)346-5511 JEN SUDICK EDITOR IN CHIEF STEVEN R. NEUMAN MANAGING EDITOR IARED PABEN AY1SHA YAHYA NEWS EDITORS MEGUANN CUNIFF PARKER HOWEI1 SENIOR NEWS REPORTERS MORIAH RAUNGIT AMANDA BOLSINGER ADAM CHERRY KARA HANSEN ANTHONY LUCERO NEWS REPORTERS CLAYTON (ONES SPORTS EDITOR ION ROETMAN SENIOR SPORTS REPORTER STEPHEN MILLER BRIAN SMITH SPORTS REPORTERS RYAN NYBURG PULSE EDITOR NATASHA CHIL1NGER1AN SENIOR PULSE REPORTER AMY EIGHTY RYAN MURPHY PULSE REPORTERS CAT RALDWIN PULSE CARTOONIST DAVID IAGERNAUTH EDITORIAL EDITOR JENNIFER MCBRIDE AILEE SLATER TRAVIS WILLSE COLUMNISTS ASHLEY GRIFFIN SUPPLEMENT FREELANCE EDITOR GABE BRADLEY NEWS FREELANCE EDITOR/ DIRECTOR OF RECRUITMENT DANIELLE HICKEY PHOTO EDITOR LAUREN WIMER SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER TIM BOBOSKY PHOTOGRAPHER NICOLE BARKER ERIK B1SHOFF PART-TIME PHOTOGRAPHERS BRET FURTWANGLER GRAPHIC ARTIST KIRA PARK DESIGN EDITOR WENDY K1EFFER AMANDA LEE DUSTIN REESE BRIAN N E SHOL1AN DESIGNERS SHADRA B LESLEY IFANN1E EVERS COPY CHIEFS KIMBERLY BLACKFIELD PAUL THOMPSON SPORTS COPY EDITORS AMANDA EVRARD AMBER L1NDROS NEWS COPY EDITORS LINDSAY BURT PULSE COPY EDITOR ADRIENNE NELSON ONLINE EDITOR SLADE LEESON WEBMASTER BUSINESS (541)346-5511 JUDY R1EDL GENERAL MANAGER KATHY CARBONE BUSINESS MANAGER REBECCA CRITCHETT RECEPTIONIST NATHAN FOSTER AIBING GUO ANDREW LFAHY JOHN LONG HOLLY MISTELL DISTRIBUTION ADVERTISING (541)346-3712 MELISSA GUST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR TYLER MACK SALES MANAGER MATT BETZ HERON CA1JSCH-DOLEN MEGAN HAMLIN KATE HIRONAKA MAEGAN KASER-LEE MIA LEIDELMEYER EMILY PHILBIN SHANNON ROGERS SALES REPRESENTATIVES KELLEE KAUFTHE1L AD ASSISTANT CLASSIFIED (541) 3464343 TRINA SHANAMAN CLASSIFIED MANAGER KA1Y GAGNON SABRINA GOWITTE LESLIE STRAIGHT KERI SPANGLER KATIE STRINGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES PRODUCTION (541)3464381 MICHELE ROSS PRODUCTION MANAGER TARA SI OAM PRODUCTION COORDINATOR JEN CRAMLEr KRISTEN DICHARRY CAMERON GAUT IONAH SCIIROGIN DESIGNERS The Oregon Daily Emerald is pub lished daily Monday through Fn day during the school year by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co. Inc., at the University of Ore gon, Eugene, Ore. The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices in Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is private property'. Unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. "?00R COMMON W? wh« NO SIR/// THIS little PARUN'J BEST &*Y5 ARE m AHEAD OF 'ER// AN' IF Y'ALL'5 WILLIN' TO M£ JUST A $mL DOWN Bwletfr THEN I GOT ONE PWf OF A TDRYUH Contraception PROTECTION “A reproductive right”— a cliche phrase that stands for one of two general ideals: for abortion or against? Beyond the inherent prob lems in asking ourselves to choose between black and white, U.S. citi zens must now deal with a new gray area emerging into the sphere of po litical discussion. Pro-death or pro misogyny won’t come into play here; the issue is not abortion but birth control. For those of us who believed that a fight about hormone pills and con doms was a fad of the ‘70s, like disco and sequins, I am sad to report that it seems to be making a dramatic comeback. Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the third-ranking Re publican in our nation’s senate, is pushing the envelope of privacy and basic rights in his opposition to con traception. Santorum is not just talk ing about abortion pills, he’s talking about birth control pills. According to a recent Newsweek article, Santo rum believes that each state should have the right to regulate contracep tion as it sees fit, meaning that San torum would support, for instance, Oregon if it decided to ban the sale and use of any contraceptive. Com ing from a high-ranking senator who has expressed wishes to run for pres ident, this fact is certainly unsettling. Also upsetting is the fact that San torum has quietly, yet publicly, ex pressed his opposition most strongly to one form of pre-emptive birth con trol in particular: the pill. According to a quote from Santorum about his opposition to birth control pills in Prevention Magazine, he claims to be against insurers covering medica tion which “would lead to a fertil ized egg not being implanted in the AILEE SLATER FURTHER FROM PERFECTION uterus ... I would not support drugs that would prevent a conceived em bryo (from being) implanted.” Of course, the error in Santorum’s thinking is amusing as well as dis turbing. I shudder to think hov many politicians are making med ically unsound decisions concerning the bodies of women. Birth contro pills are designed to deliver certair hormones into a woman’s body ir order to trick her system into think ing that it is already pregnant, there fore preventing the release of an egg For Santorum to claim that birth con trol pills could possibly stop an al ready fertilized egg from becoming i fetus demonstrates a complete lacl of knowledge about an issue fo: which, as a policy-maker, he shouk be intimately acquainted with. Likewise, emergency contracep tion manipulates hormones in th< same manner, simply at a larger lev el. If conception has occurred, th< “morning-after pill” will have ab solutely no effect on this fertilizec egg. The opposition to emergency contraception as killing life, fron both Santorum as well as an increas ing number of conservatives, is sci entifically unfounded. The Justici Department recently published nev guidelines for treating rape victims which include no reference to emer gency contraception as a method o preventing pregnancy. Planned Par enthood and the American Civil Lib erties Union have already spoken out against this prominent omission; still, it is frightening to realize that it is the radicals rather than leaders of our country who are coming to the aid of women recovering from rape. Of course, it is not just these meth ods of birth control coming under fire. Santorum has made no distinc tion between hormonal birth control and latex birth control and this fact, along with Bush’s well-known sup port of abstinence-only education, points to a group of policy-makers amiable to the idea of condoms as a ; thing of the past. This particular group just happens to be in charge of The United States of America, mean ing that without left-wingers assert ing power, the legality of our little la tex friends might be liable to go limp. And, at the point where con doms are being discussed, sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS in re i lation to policies of contraception present even more concerns within backwards ideas on birth control. 1 It is just one senator from Pennsyl vania, and it is just one former gov ernor from Texas. Just one partial ■ birth abortion policy, just one emergency-contraception regulation. ‘ It is just one Justice Department. It may seem impossible, improbable 1 and everything in between that birth ’ control, just birth control, could ever i be illegal. Let us hope that those run ning our nation will remember that human rights and women’s rights ! have taken us this far; now is not the r time to turn back the clock. f aileeslater@ dailyemerald, com OREGON DAILY EMERALD LETTERS POLICY Letters to the editor and guest commentaries are encouraged, and should tie sent to letters@dailyemerald.com or submitted at the Oregon Daily Emerald office, EMU Suite 300. Electronic submissions are preferred. Letters are limited to 250 words, and guest commentaries to 550 words. Authors are limited to one submission per calendar month. Submissions should include phone number and address for verification. The Emerald reserves the r#it to edit for space, grammar and style. Guest submissions am published at the discretion of the Emerald. ■ Editorial Columnist bribed to push Bush A black media pundit who is willing to de nounce so-called “black groupthink” in sup port of conservative policies is worth his weight in Republican gold. Literally. On Jan. 7, USA Today reported that the Bush administration paid (or more accurately bribed) syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams to produce positive press about the president’s chief education reform legislation, No Child Left Behind. The payola scheme cost taxpayers $240,000. For his egregious ethical violation, Williams has lost his newspaper syndication contract with TVibune Media Services and most of his friends in the conservative media. The Na tional Review's Jonah Goldberg had to sheep ishly admit “that if Bill Clinton had gotten caught giving Joe Conason a quarter of a mil lion dollars to be flogging their policies, guys like me would have smoke coming out of our ears, and the right would go crazy. ” Even Williams himself, talking on CNN’s “Crossfire” (or “Crosstalk” as it should be called), couldn’t defend his own actions. “I used bad judgment. As a media pundit, peo ple have to trust what I say. They have to be lieve in what I say. And they must believe that I’m saying it not because I’m being paid. ... I should be criticized, and I crossed some ethi cal lines. I've learned from this. It will never happen again.” Only the responsibility-phobic Bush admin istration seems unwilling to admit any wrong doing. A Department of Education spokesper son insisted that the bribe was “a permissible use of taxpayer funds” that produced a “straightforward distribution of information.” Even Bill Clinton eventually said he was sorry. Williams should give the $240,000 bribe back to the American people, and Congress should demand an investigation into the le gality of the deal. The Government Account ability Office (GAO) has already found the Bush administration guilty of illegally using taxpayer money on “covert propaganda” to promote their Medicare prescription drug plan. Video news segments were produced to look like the real thing. The government was never attributed as a source, thus violating federal law. An opinion columnist taking money to write government propaganda is a horren dous violation of journalistic ethics. Even more disturbing is the Bush administration’s attempt to deceive the public by presenting propaganda as fact. Why should people trust anything that the president or the media tells them? At this point, they probably shouldn’t. EDITORIAL BOARD Jennifer Sudick Steven R. Neuman Editor in Chief Managing Editor David Jagernauth Gabe Bradley Editorial Editor Freelance Editor CORRECTION In the Emerald’s article "ASUO leaders might not re pay funds from trip,” which published Jan. 6, the Emerald reported that the ASUO fall finance retreat took place Oct. 10-12. The retreat was Oct. 8-10. The Emerald regrets the error.
