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About The Clackamas print. (Oregon City, Oregon) 1989-2019 | View Entire Issue (April 21, 2004)
COMMENTARY 4 • T he C lackamas P rint A pril 21, 200; Fetus defense attacks choice Debate on founding fathers religion rages or Ben Maras O pinion E ditor Everyone wave goodbye to a woman’s right to . chose, because it looks like Bush and his religious “right” cronies are. at it again, and this time they may just have gained the foothold they need to topple the institution of choice known as “abortion.” They already passed a bill banning late-term abortions, something which was more or less accepted by conservatives and “liberals” alike, due to the special circumstances involving late-term abortions. But this new law makes attacking a preg nant woman two counts of assault (or murder or whatever the charge may be). Let me take a moment to promise that I will not mention the war in this piece. But if I did, I might just mention the P hoto I llustration mass hypocrisy in the fact that el Presidente is trying to protect some fetuses while sending the fully-grown fetuses of this country to their deaths in Iraq—but I won’t. Maybe this law would not be so dangerous if it did not have such far sweeping effects, Imagine this sce- nario: a scared mother teenage goes to the abor- tion clinic. She did not know she was pregnant, and it’s too late for emer- . gency contracep tion (a.k.a. the “morning-after” pill). They grant her an abortion and she P hoto C ourtesy of WWWJKP.ORG can get on with her President Bush signs in the new bill. life, *'■ but the But many wonder, is it defense of Fundament a 1 is t lynch mob comes the unborn or an assault on choice? storming up the road. She isn’t 18; she’s not of con sensual age to have an abortion. Therefore, the abortion can be considered an act of assault (and murder) and the doctor gets strung up before the court and tried with this hew law. This can easily be extended to other technicalities, too. Sound farfetched? One of the few things that both those supporting and those opposing abortion have ever agreed on is that this new law is just step one in a sweeping movement to ban all abortions. No more Roe vs. Wade, and if that happens ... well, we will have a bit of a mess on our hands, as open season starts for religious ; fundamentalists to start a crusade against choice: and start dragging up doctors and treating them as murderers. Do we really want to return to the world of back alley “coat hanger” abortions? • With all that said and done, it by CORY PRICE C lackamas P rint is not an outright terrible idea to make attacking a pregnant woman a more serious charge, but considering an attack two counts of the same crime is not the correct way to go about it. What if a woman on fertility drugs, pregnant with five fetus es, gets assaulted (or heaven for bid, killed)? Should her assailant receive six counts of the crime for only one action? What about just adding a lesser charge such as involuntary manslaughter? Or making a whole new charge for attacking a pregnant woman? This simple answer just goes to show the hidden anti-choice agenda of those who created this bill. We can not let our basic free doms that make America what it is be: pushed aside and trampled on by fundamentalist beliefs. What a woman does to her own body is the choice of the experts: a woman, her partner (if applicable) and her doctor—not George Dubya’s flying circus. Wal-Mart always has low wages, always Sara Atkeson C ontributing W riter Wal-Mart has been called the piranha of American capitalism and to let this innocent-looking predator swim in our local fish pond will be devastating to our community. Some might think a new Wal- Mart would create new jobs and be helpful in boosting the local t INTERNET PHOTO Letters to the Editor economy. I believe this is simply not true. ...... According to the Flagstaff Activist Network (FAN), studies have shown that the community loses three jobs for every two cre ated by a Wal-Mart store. On their website, FAN also cites a report by the Congressional Research Service, which gave a warning to communities to evaluate the sig nificance of job gains at big-box stores against the loss of jobs due to reduced business at competing retailers. Furthermore, the report points out that these new jobs “provide significantly lower wages than jobs in many industries, and are often only part-time positions, seasonal opportunities or subject to extensive turnover.” Wal-Mart utilizes other com mon practices to keep cost of Wages down, as well, such as forc ing employees to work overtime without compensation—a prac tice that they were sued for here in Portland two years ago. According to www. organic- consumers. org, a federal jury in Portland found 18 Wal- Mart stores in Oregon guilty of violating federal and state laws by pressuring employees to clock out after 40 hours yet still continue working. Moreover, a study released by Richard Drogin, a partner of the statistical consulting firm Drogin, Kakigi and Associates of Berkeley, Calif., found that a dis proportionate number of women are working at lower-paid hourly positions than men, and they average less in wages at those position. According to Drogin, about 65 percent of hourly employees are women, while only about 33 of management positions are held by women. Drogin said they also average $0.30 an hour less for cashier positions than men doing the same job;—$8.03 an hour compared to a man’s $8.33. “The disparities in pay are so great that attribute it to an accident,” said Joseph Sellers, whose firm has represent ed the plaintiffs in suits against Wal-Mart for employee discrimi nation. “There is strong evidence that the company is mistreating women because they are women.” Lastly I would like to dispel the myth that Wal-Mart “always has low prices, always.” A newspaper in Carroll County, Ark., conduct ed a test of Wal-Mart’s low-price claim, surveying a list of 19 com-’ mon household items over a one- month period. The survey found that Wal-Mart had the cheapest price on only two of the items. Ultimately, Wal-Mart’s legacy won’t be its lower prices, but the lower living standards for its This corporate employees, monster does not belong in our community. (In response to Joe Clement’s Let:, the Editor in the 4/14/04 editiot The Clackamas Print). Clement makes several sj cious and fallacious claims in letter that need to be corrected a matter of fairness and clarity. Clement refutes the statemi “this country was founded Christian fundamentals,” the d sis of his letter. Clement claims that “Many our founding fathers were Deis For support, he offers Thon Jefferson, Ben Franklin, J<, Adams and James Madison Deists, and concludes announcing therefore “Amer wasn?t founded on Christian ft damentals; they had to find tl way in.” Any first-year CCC studi can easily recognize the pois< well fallacy that Clement tries employ, which is: if some app are bad, all are bad. He has, concludes that because the ft men he quotes are Deist, son how—he never explains how Christian principles found th way into the Constitution. I must be brief. 1) More tl four men were involved in writ the U.S. Constitution. 2) All of four men Clement mentit adopted Christian principles it the Constitution without co cion. 3) John Adams, the sect president of the United States, well as the others he mentions misquoted; The. misqu Clement bases his theory on most likely this one: “This wo be the best of all possible wor if there were no religion in it.” Leftist revisionists would 1 you to believe that Adams i opposed to religion and was active Deist. However, the quote is: “Twenty times in course of my late reading hav been on the point of break out, this would be the best of all\ sible worlds, if there were no reiit in it. But in this exclamatioi would have been as fanatical Bryant or Cleverly. Without i gion, this would be something fit to be mentioned in polite ci pany, I mean hell” (letter Thomas Jefferson, dated April 1817). Adams, as well as all foun< fathers, accepted all religions valid expressions of faith, and most certainly open to the tc; ings of Jesus Christ, cal Christianity “the religion of son, equity, and love” (letter F.A. Van der Kemp, ds December 27,1816). Attacks on Christianity legion. For 2,000 years, it has v stood many more brutal att that the- oversimplification Clement, and it will survive 1 after the last person on earth flung the last rock at its princif John Hart CCC Student fi iii.iil k Hits to chiefed@clackamas,edu <• b’ ini’ them oil ;i Hopp1 di'-k to URI i i In this ■ridai .it I p.m PIr.uc. include your name and pu<>ne ninnilit and Itnr letters to 3<X) words or I. Sulanii-sions locarne proper! The <'lackatnas ¡hint an1 r ¡<-ct ro editing on the ground.- length, ciani}, content and grat’ii
