OPINION
6A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JULY 27, 2015
The high price of fetal parts
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
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Schnitzer largess
provides future
chnitzer is a famous name in philanthropic circles, supporting
Portland’s concert hall and other noteworthy causes in our area.
Part of a recent gift by Arlene
Schnitzer Foundation of $1 million
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Project, the multi-state historic/
art installation anchored in Ilwaco,
Wash.’s, Cape Disappointment State
Park.
Maya Lin, one of world’s most
famous
designers,
envisioned
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morial to the melding of Native
American and newly arriving cultures
during the era of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition.
“At this site, Lewis and Clark
found what they were looking for:
the point where the Columbia River
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“Their journey’s endpoint is where
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with an installation that draws togeth-
er the site’s bay side and ocean side,
interweaving the stories of the Corps
of Discovery expedition and the
Chinook people in a single, steadily
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It is often the case that ideas for art
installations and other public spaces
are born in a rush of enthusiasm, but
then become degraded by passage of
time and lack of funds for the far less
glamorous work of maintenance and
preservation. Finding money for such
ongoing efforts is one of the Holy
Grails of philanthropic work. It is the
success that turns a bright idea into
long-lasting heritage.
Enter Schnitzer, whose gift in hon-
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supporter Thomas Lauderdale will
help support not just the decade-old
Maya Lin works at Cape D, but also
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endowment fund to care the projects,
the Schnitzer money will be pivotal to
2017 completion of the potently sym-
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Project adjacent to Celilo Falls — a
key Indian landmark now submerged
behind The Dalles Dam.
Initially a mixed source of pride
and consternation for people who live
in the vicinity, the Cape D installation
has matured and grown in accep-
tance. Thanks to earlier fundraising
efforts, a 12-ton block of polished and
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has been re-etched this month, the
words of the Chinook creation story
now likely to withstand at least anoth-
er couple decades of harsh storms and
salmon guts. A trail makes an evoca-
tive connection between the river and
ocean. Five cedar driftwood columns
surrounding a cedar tree trunk that ex-
isted before Lewis and Clark arrived
are reminiscent of European “wood
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have been found thousands of years
after their construction.
No shoreline is ever permanent —
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to see sound stewardship of an im-
portant artwork, even in this time of
imminent change.
How much local
control is too much?
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an effort to put a ballot initiative de-
signed to overturn laws pre-empting
local control of matters regulated by
the state.
Though backers of the “Right
to Local, Community Self-
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ing their options, we hope this puts an
end to this nonsense.
Initiative backers hoped to be able
to turn back state prohibitions on lo-
cal governments banning genetically
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lation of pesticides. They also would
like local jurisdictions to be able to
regulate fracking, oil and gas devel-
opment and coal exports.
In part, backers seek to allow local
jurisdictions “to enact local laws that
protect health, safety, and welfare by:
establishing the fundamental rights
of natural, their communities, and
nature; securing those rights using
prohibitions and other means; and es-
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inating the rights, powers, privileges,
immunities, or duties of corporations
and other business entities operating
or seeking to operate in the commu-
nity, to prevent such rights, powers,
privileges, immunities, or duties from
interfering with such locally-enacted
fundamental rights of natural persons,
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signatures on their petitions, which
gave them standing to receive a re-
view for a ballot title — an important
step in getting the measure on the
2016 ballot.
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rejected the initiative. It says the mea-
sure is too broad. Mary Geddry, a chief
petitioner for the initiative, said that
proponents haven’t yet decided on a
course of action but disagree with the
Secretary of State’s conclusions. She
says her group isn’t going to roll over.
“We’re talking about fundamental
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have the right to say ‘no’ under the
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suspect that she’s talking about things
liberals don’t like. In addition to ban-
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ties would write their own minimum
wage laws, gun regulations and envi-
ronmental rules. And if they decide
they don’t like dry cleaners or meat
packers, who knows.
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would be sauce for the goose.
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largely conservative counties of
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don’t apply, or gun regulations they
believe make people less safe and
trample on personal freedoms, or
state land-use restrictions that violate
personal property rights.
During the 1990s, there was a pro-
posal to give county commissions the
authority to regulate cougar hunting.
This was tantamount to creating 36
wildlife management organizations
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In theory, it’s hard to argue against
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ties and 242 incorporated cities into
an independent duchy would set up
a patchwork of regulation that would
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not impossible.
Remember. The advent
sisted-suicide patients are
euthanized without their
of ultrasound has coincid-
explicit consent.
ed with a remarkable phe-
The Planned Parent-
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$6+,1*721 ² 3ODQQHG hood revelations will have
social issues, abortion is
Parenthood’s reaction to the an effect. Perhaps not on
the only one that has not
release of a clandestinely recorded government funding, giv-
moved toward increasing
conversation about the sale of fetal en the Democratic Party’s
liberalization. While the
body parts was highly revealing. Af- unwavering support and
legalization of drugs, the
ter protesting that it did nothing il- the president wishing it
UHGH¿QLWLRQ RI PDUULDJH
OHJDOLWDSRORJL]HGIRUWKH³WRQH´RI divine guidance. Planned
and other assertions of in-
Charles
Parenthood might es-
one of its senior directors.
dividual autonomy have
Krauthammer
Her remarks lacked compassion, cape legal jeopardy as
advanced, some with as-
admitted Planned Parenthood Presi- well, given the loophole in the law tonishing rapidity, abortion attitudes
dent Cecile Richards. As if Dr. Deb- banning the sale of fetal parts that have remained largely static. The
orah Nucatola’s cold and casual dis- permits compensation for expenses country remains evenly split.
cussion over salad and wine of how (shipping and handling, as it were).
What will be the reaction to these
%XW WKHVH UHYHODWLRQV ZLOO KDYH Planned Parenthood revelations?
the fetal body can be crushed with
forceps in a way that leaves valuable an effect on public perceptions. Just Right now, to try to deprive it of
organs intact for sale is some kind as ultrasound altered feelings about taxpayer money. Citizens repelled
RI SHUVRQDO LGLRV\QFUDV\ 2Q WKH abortion by showing the image, the by its activities should not be made
contrary, it’s precisely the kind of movement, the vibrant living-ness FRPSOLFLWLQWKHP%XWZK\QRWVKLIW
psychic numbing that occurs when of the developing infant in utero, the focus from the facilitator to the
dealing daily with industrial scale so too, I suspect, will these Planned procedure itself?
destruction of the growing, thriving, Parenthood revelations, by throwing
The House has already passed a
open the door to the backroom of the bill banning abortion after 20 weeks.
recognizably human fetus.
This was again demonstrated by clinic where that being is destroyed. That’s far more fruitful than trying
It’s an ugly scene. The issue is to ban it entirely because, apart from
the release this week of a second vid-
HRVKRZLQJDQRWKHURI¿FLDOVSRUWLQJ less the sale of body parts than how the obvious constitutional issue,
that same tone, casual and even joc- they are obtained. The nightmare there is no national consensus about
ular, while haggling over the price of for abortion advocates is a spread- the moral status of the early embryo.
ing consciousness There’s more agreement on the mor-
an embryonic liver.
of how exactly a al status of the later-term fetus. In-
“If it’s still low, then
‘Thank you healthy fetus is deed, about two-thirds of Americans
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turned into a mass of ZRXOGEDQDERUWLRQDIWHUWKH¿UVWWUL-
she joked, “I want a
Planned
marketable organs, mester.
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Abortion critics Parenthood. how, in the words
There is more division about the
of a senior Planned ¿UVWWULPHVWHUEHFDXVHRQH¶VYLHZVRI
have long warned
that the problem is
God bless 3DUHQWKRRG RI¿FLDO the early embryo are largely a matter
one might use “a less RIEHOLHIRIWHQUHOLJLRXVEHOLHI2QH¶V
not only the obvious
you.’
FUXQFK\ WHFKQLTXH´ view of the later-term fetus, howev-
— what abortion
— crush the head, er, is more a matter of what might be
does to the fetus —
— Barack Obama spare the organs — FDOOHG V\PSDWKHWLF LGHQWL¿FDWLRQ ²
but also what it does
address to Planned
“to get more whole seeing the image of a recognizable
to us. It’s the same
Parenthood, April 26, 2013
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kind of desensitiza-
human infant and, now, hearing from
The effect on the the experts exactly what it takes to
tion that has occurred
in the Netherlands with another mass public is a two-step change in sen- ³WHUPLQDWH´LWVH[LVWHQFH
exercise in life termination: assisted sibilities. First, when ultrasound re-
The role of democratic politics is
suicide. It began as a way to prevent veals how human the living fetus ap- to turn such moral sensibilities into
the suffering of the terminally ill. It pears. Next, when people learn, as in law. This is a moment to press relent-
has now become so widespread and these inadvertent admissions, what lessly for a national ban on late-term
ZDQWRQWKDWRQH¿IWKRIDOO'XWFKDV- killing the fetus involves.
abortions.
By CHARLES
KRAUTHAMMER
Washington Post Writers Group
W
The minimum-wage muddle
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times News Service
O
nce upon a time there was a
near consensus among econ-
omists that raising the minimum
wage was a bad idea.
The market is really good at
setting prices on things, whether
it is apples or labor. If you raise
the price on a worker, employers
will hire few-
er and you’ll
end up hurting
the people you
meant to help.
Then,
in
1993, econ-
omists
Da-
vid Card and
Alan Krueger
looked at fast-
food restau-
David
rants in New
Brooks
Jersey
and
Pennsylvania and found that rais-
ing the minimum wage gave peo-
ple more income without hurting
employment. A series of studies in
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Today, raising the minimum
wage is the central piece of the
progressive economic agenda.
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lary Clinton champion it. Cities
and states across the country have
been moving to raise minimum
wages to as high as $15 an hour
— including New York state just
this week.
Some of my Democratic friends
are arguing that forcing businesses
to raise their minimum wage will
not only help low-wage workers;
it will actually boost profits, be-
cause companies will better retain
workers. Some economists have
reported that there is no longer
any evidence that raising wages
will cost jobs.
Unfortunately, that last claim is
inaccurate. There are in fact many
studies on each side of the issue.
David Neumark of the University
of California, Irvine, and William
Wascher of the Federal Reserve
have done their own studies and
point to dozens of others showing
significant job losses.
Recently, Michael Wither and
Jeffrey Clemens of the University
of California, San Diego, looked
at data from the 2007 federal
minimum-wage hike and found
that it reduced the national em-
ployment-to-population ratio by
0.7 percentage points (which is
actually a lot), and led to a 6-per-
centage-point decrease in the like-
lihood that a low-wage worker
would have a job.
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get less work experience under
a higher minimum-wage regime,
they are less likely to transition to
higher-wage jobs down the road.
Mary Altaffer /AP
Harley Perez, of Manhattan, who makes $8.75 and hour working at a
McDonald’s, smiles during a rally after the New York Wage Board en-
dorsed a proposal to set a $15 minimum wage for workers at fast-food
restaurants with 30 or more locations, Wednesday in New York. The
increase would be phased in over three years in New York City and
over six years elsewhere.
Wither and Clemens found that 59 percent believed that a rise to
two years later, workers’ chances $9 an hour would make it “notice-
of making $1,500 a month was re- DEO\KDUGHU´IRUSRRUSHRSOHWRILQG
duced by 5 percentage points.
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Many economists have point- thought the hike would be worth-
ed out that as a poverty-fighting while for those in jobs. A study by
measure the minimum wage is WKH &RQJUHVVLRQDO %XGJHW 2IILFH
horribly targeted. A 2010 study found that a hike to $10.10 might
E\-RVHSK6DELDDQG5LFKDUG%XU- lift 900,000 out of poverty but cost
khauser found that only 11.3 per- roughly 500,000 jobs.
cent of workers who would bene-
My own guess is the econo-
fit from raising the wage to $9.50 mists will never be able to give us
an hour would come from poor a dispositive answer about who is
households. An earlier study by hurt or helped. Economists have
Sabia found that single mothers’ their biases and reality is too gran-
employment dropped 6 percent ular. It depends on what region a
for every 10 percent
worker is in, wheth-
increase in the min-
er a particular job
Economists can be easily done
imum wage.
A
study
by
by a machine, what
have their
Thomas MaCurdy
the mindset of his or
of Stanford built on
her employer is.
biases
the fact that there
The best rea-
are as many individ-
and reality sonable guess is
uals in high-income
that a gradual hike
is too
families
making
in high-cost cities
the minimum wage
like Seattle or New
granular.
(teenagers) as in
York will probably
low-income fami-
not produce mas-
lies. MaCurdy found that the costs VLYH GLVORFDWLRQ %XW UDLVLQJ WKH
of raising the wage are passed on wage to $15 in rural New York
to consumers in the form of high- will cause large disruptions and
er prices. Minimum-wage workers job losses.
often work at places that dispro-
The key intellectual upshot is
portionately serve people down that, despite what some people
the income scale. So raising the want you to believe, the laws of
minimum wage is like a regres- economic gravity have not been
sive consumption tax paid for by suspended. You can’t impose
the poor to subsidize the wages costs on some without trade-offs
of workers who are often middle for others. You can’t intervene
class.
in the market without unintend-
What we have, in sum, is a very ed consequences. And here’s a
complicated situation. If we do haunting fact that seems to make
raise the minimum wage a lot of sense: Raising the minimum wage
people will clearly benefit and a lot will produce winners among job
of people will clearly be hurt. The holders from all backgrounds, but
most objective and broadest bits it will disproportionately punish
of evidence provoke ambivalence. those with the lowest skills, who
2QH VXUYH\ RI HFRQRPLVWV E\ WKH are least likely to be able to justify
University of Chicago found that higher employment costs.