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
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