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OPINION
Page 4
Sunday, October 12, 1980.
The Michigan Daily
I
III-
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Back and forth on
Vol. XCI, No. 34
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of The Daily's Editorial Board
One Agee and sexism..
There is no question of morality or law
before the American public that has spurred
as much bitter debate as abortion. The pro-
choice movement sees itself as protecting
women's most basic human right: that to
decide whether or not to bring new life into
the world. The pro-life movement's name
speaks for itself: Its members believe that
once conception has occurred, the decision to
bring new life into the world has already been
made. The fetus is a human being for every
moment of its nine-month existence and has
as much right to live out its days as any other
human, pro-lifers argue.
William Fitzgerald, the Democrat who at-
tempted to unseat Michigan's Governor
William Milliken two years ago, learned the
hard way how single-minded some vters are
on the issue of abortion. Millions of life-long
Democrats voted for Milliken for no other
reason than that he is solidly pro-choice,
One can easily see why a strict conser-
vative might favor a woman's right to abort:
If government should cut back on business
regulations (environmental, safety, price
controls, and the like), certainly it should
leave private citizens to make their own
decisions about personal health matters. It is,
each individual woman's prerogative to
decide whether abortion is morally objec-
tionable. Government-imposed morality, the
pro-choice conservative argues, is a con-
tradiction in terms.
MY OWN EVOLUTION on the abortion
issue has been a painful and tortuous one. I
was born into a liberal Democratic family
that had me selling seashells for Gene McCar-
thy at the age of 11.
abortion
fetus' is human, they have no moral alter-
native but to attempt to prevent its extinction.
It is unconscionable to expect them to let the
offspring of a pro-choice woman perish in
silence, merely because the mother's politics
permit it.
And yet I remain committed to sustaining
the freedom of every woman to choose abor-
tion. I'm obviously not entirely comfortable
with my position, and yet I feel that the
arguments in its favor are substantial enough
to withstand the (admittedly noble) efforts of
the opposition.
I DO NOT claim that the fetus is
unquestionably non-human; I suspect that
that question will never be satisfactorily set-
tled. Still, other situations exist where killing
0
MARY CUNNINGHAM'S resigna-
tion from Bendix Corp. last
Thursday culminates a most unfor-
tunate example of sexism in the cor-
porate world and in society as a whole.
Cunningham only three weeks ago
was promoted to vice president for
strategic planning at the company,
making her, at age 29, one of the
highest-ranking female executives of a
major U.S. firm.
Because she had risen very rapidly
through the echelons of Bendix, and
because she was rumored to have a
close relationship with William Agee,
the chairman of the board, company
gossip had it that she was promoted for
reasons other than her business
abilities.
That such insidious gossip arises
frequently when a woman is promoted
in the predominately male corporate
world is unfortunate; Cunningham ap-
peared well-qualifed for the executive
position. .
What made this case even wor-
se-and led to Cunningham's
resignation-was Agee's attempt to
quell the rumors by announcing to his
employees and the media that the
promotion had nothing to do with any
personal relationships. That ill-
considered announcement effectively
legitimized, the employee gossip and
inflated an in-house Bendix issue into a
major media scandal.
The media-especially the Detroit
Free Press, which broke the story and
covered its developments
salaciously-is to be chastised for pan-
dering to society's sexism.
And society is to be criticized for
continuing to raise its collective
eyebrows whenever a woman achieves
a position of prominence.
Ob iquity
By Joshua Peck
. .Another and passports
F OLLOWING IN the path of its
Republican predecessor, the
Carter administration has embarked
on an effort to impose prior restraint
on an American citizen. Former Cen-
tral Intelligence Agency operative
Philip Agee, who since leaving the
Company several years ago has been
writing anti-Agency books and ar-
ticles,i' s the current victim of
repressive activity by the federal
government.
A year ago, Agee irritated his former
employers by publishing a book
decrying the actions of the CIA during
the U.S.' final days in Vietnam. That
controversy ended when the Supreme
Court ordered that any profits Agee
earned be turned over to the gover-
nment. The reasoning here was that
Agee had not submitted the transcript
to the CIA for clearance before it was
published, and therefore had violated
an agreement all CIA agents sign when
they join up. We quarreled with the
court's decision then, and still main-
tain that before it levied any fine, the
government should have had td prove,
that Agee had done material harm
through his disclosures.
Now the feds have gone a step fur-
ther. The Justice Department,
in collusion with the Customs Depar-
tment, has blocked Agee's attempts to
leave the country for Europe. The CIA
reasonably surmises that .Agee might
be planning to continue his activities of
the last several months, i.e., disclosing
the identities of Agency operatives and
the nature of their activities on the
Continent and elsewhere.
By barring him from leaving the
country in the first place, the gover-
nment hopes to keep Agee from doing
any more damage to the clandestine
hijinks of the United States overseas.
The same heinous mindset is at work
in the'current controversy as in the
notorious Pentagon Papers case of the
Nixon years. Then-President Nixon,
afraid that the Defense Department
materials The New York Times was
planning to publish might prove em-
barrassing, tried to get a prior
restraint order from the courts to keep
the Times from printing the infor-
mation at all. The Nixon ad-
ministration lost-and well it should
have. Had such a precedent been set in
the Nixon case, a pattern might have
developed of screening all defen-
se-and intelligence-related
materials before publication.
The Carter administration has
clearly not learned the.lesson that the
Supreme Court attempted to teach in
the Pentagon Papers case. Agee
should be granted a passport and
freedom to travel abroad. If and when
he endangers American security per-
sonnel, he should be prosecuted by
government lawyers, if they see fit.
But to block Agee before he has com-
mitted any crime is a violation of Con-
stitutional principle. It amounts to a
fulsome attempt to save the gover-
nment the trouble of building a case
against Agee, and it should not be
tolerated. Passports are for all
Americans, not just for supporters of
the government.
securing a healthy margin of victory for the
incumbent over the pro-life Fitzgerald.
THE 1978 MICHIGAN race is no
aberration; it has happened dozens of times
in political races around the country that a
candidate's stand on abortion has determined
his success or failure.
The abortion issue seems veritably to con-
found the usual lines of liberal vs. conser-
vative. While freedom of choice in abortion is
an integral part of the National Organization
for Women's priorities for public policy, some
vociferous supporters of the Equal Rights
Amendment and other feminist doctrines see
abortion as being in a different class entirely.
At the Democratic convention last August,
a group called Democrats for Life showed up
in large numbers to push its anti-abortion
views. It is not composed of Dixiecrats or of
wild-eyed reactionaries who are Democrats
only in name. The women (and a few men) of
DFL seemed to be supporters of virtually
every liberal, humanitarian cause under the
sun. Some are veterans of the civil rights and
anti-war efforts of the sixties. Virtually all
think it ridiculous that the ERA has not yet
been passed.
BUT UNLIKE MOST of the convention
delegates; who passed a strongly pro-choice
platform, DFL thinks that the principles that,
extend equal rights to oppressed minorities
and to foreign victims of U.S. agression ought
to embrace the rights of the fetus to exist as
well.
Then again, there is a considerable body of
traditional Republican conservatives which
sides with the pro-choice feminists on the
issue of abortion. James Kilpatrick is perhaps
the most eloquent speaker on the American
right who holds this view.
During his recent visit to Ann Arbor,
Kilpatrick noted that the abortion issue was
one of the very few on which he had sided with
Washington, D.C. last winter.
The abortion fight first came to my atten-
tion in 1973, the year the Supreme Court af-
firmed, in Roe vs. Wade, that abortion was a
woman's right. At that point, I perceived the
issue as just another case of "Us against
Them": We who hated anti-Semitism,
racism, war, economic injustice, and pro-
lifers against Them, the insidious eye-rolling
right that wanted wealth and power for the
already-wealthy and powerful, and unwanted
babies for everyone.
I've come quite a way from that simplistic
vision. For one thing, I'm convinced now that
advocates of both the pro-choice and pro-life
sides are acting fundamentally in good faith. I
have met and argued with too many com-
passionate, caring opponents of abortion to
believe otherwise.
Pro-lifers quite simply see themselves' as
the only spokespersons for the most defen-'
seless, vulnerable people on the planet.
THE BRUSQUE PRO-CHOICE response to
this notion goes something like this: "If that's
the way you see it, then don't abort. But don't
foist your perceptions of what is life and what
is not on us." That argument registers with
me as totally abhorrent. What would the abor-
tion advocates who take this approach have
said to slaveowners who claimed a religious
conviction that blacks weren't human?
It is the business of every human to ensure
that his/her fellow humans are accorded
human rights. Since pro-lifets believe the
MEMBERS OF CENTRAL Michigan Right to Life march in front of the White House in
is proper, and indeed the only moral course o0
action. I think Americans who refused to join
the anti-Nazi effort in World War II were not
merely cowards, they were moral deviants.
Yet killing was part of that effort. The moral
principle is clear here:rKilling is justified
when refusing to kill will result in greater suf-
fering for more people than agreeing to kill.
The spectre of the back alley abortion alone
is enough to sway me from the seductive,
seeming humanitarianism of the pro-lifers.
But even more central to my pro-choice
belief is a simple, somewhat irrational gut
feeling. I cannot bring myself to demand of
any woman that she carry an unwanted child
for nine months, only to be faced with the ex-
crutiating choice of surrendering the child for
adoption or embarking-on an unbearaby bur-
b densome 15 or 18 yihrS'of raising it. I feel that
to take such a stance would be unspeakably
self-righteous.
I suppose I'm resigned to an interminable
struggle with members of the pro-life
movement. I oppose them politically, yet 1
have more respect and sympathy for them
than for many of the pro-choice advocates I
meet.
It's a precarious position indeed.
Joshua Peck is the co-editor of
Daily's Opinion Page. His column
pears every Sunday.
The
ap-
Shana Alexander in their
Counterpoint" segments on "Sixty
"Point-
Minutes."
A lien issue'getsshort
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GiOIN4 ON!
With some five million
Mexicans entering the United
States illegally each year and
with projections of Hispanics
-becoming the nation's largest
minority in the near future, one
might think that the issue of im-
migration would warrant some
substantive, clear-cut proposals
from this year's presidential con-
tenders.
Instead, voters are being of-
fered ambiguous statements
about "guest worker" programs
that failed in Europe five years
ago, identification and
classification procedures that
have long drawn the wrath of
human rights advocates, and im-
plied threats to crack down on
U.S. employers of illegals.
NOTHING IN THE bag of
political buzzwords will
significantly alter the long-term
impacts of Latin American im-
migration. At most, they will,
temporarily appease or anger a
variety of special interest groups
in the United States whose votes
carry more weight this year than
all of the up to 12 million illegals
who already are estimated to
reside in the United States.
Ronald Reagan probably came
closer than anyone to touching
the raw nerve of the issue when
he issued a call in Texas for open
borders between the U.S. and
Mexico, and for llowing
Mexican workers to dnter the
country "for whatever length of
massive kind of exodus across
the border. The fact is, the status
quo simply is not working and we
should be more realistic about
our policies of admitting for
specific periods of time more
people than now legally cross the
border."
Gray added that the Reagan
"concept" is to admit Mexican
workers for between three and
six months as "guest workers"
with work permits-a plan
already proposed by the gover-
nors of Texas, New Mexico,
Arizona, and California, as well
as six Mexican border states.
Whatever the specific Reagan
proposal (and Reagan has not
personally elaborated on it), the
guest worker concept is one that
draws applause from powerful
special interest groups in the
Southwest, especially from
agricultural and industrial in-
terests who depend on a steady
supply of cheap labor from
across the border.
BUT THE GUEST worker idea
is also strongly opposed by other
interest groups which Reagan is
also courting, including many
Mexican-Americans who fear for
their own jobs, and blue-collar
white workers who oppose any
increase in Hispanics because of
presumed overloads on the
welfare system.
come on a temporary basis
to take jobs that go unfilled."
As for those undocumented
workers already here, Reagan
would favor some sort of amnesty
for workers who had demon-
strated "good citizenship" over a
ten to 15 year period, said Gray.
He would oppose heavier san-
ctions on employers who continue
to hire undocumented workers.
"It is impractical to try to put the
burden of proof on an employer in
deciding who is an illegal alien,"
said Gray.
IN ANY CASE, he added, a
Reagan administration would do
nothing on the immigration issue
until it could review a report, due
on March 1, 1981, by a select
commission on immigration ap-
pointed three years ago.
The Reagan position on im-
migration thus offers no change
from present policies, with the
major exception of the guest
worker program, which is still
ambiguous in its "concept." And
even that proposal would cer-
tainly encounter formidable
hostility in Congress, predicts
Professor Wayne Cornelius,
director of the program on U.S.-
Mexian Studies at the University
of California, San Diego.
.But at least Reagan's proposal
does square off sharply against
the immigration policies of the
By Robert Milliken
shrit
immigration pronouncements as
"simplistic and unworkable.'
MARSHALL MAINTAINS that
plenty of American workers
could be found for the so-called
lower grade jobs filled by illegal
aliens, and blames the problem
on a number of employers who*
he claims, exploit illegal workers
with low pay and substandard
conditions. Marshall has
estimated that the unem-
ployment rate could be brought
down to 3.7 percent if U.S.
workers took the place of the
estimated two million illegal
workers now holding jobs here
(this is one of the lowes
estimates of illegal workers).
Ironically, it is the Reagan
position which tends to emerge
from the comparisons as the
more liberal. "The Carter
people," notes Prof. Cornelius,
"prefer to attack the Mexican
workers on grounds that they are
taking jobs and depressing
wages. To the Democrats,
political refugees are OK, but
economic refugees are not
because they compete with our*
workers."
As for the independent can-
didate, John Anderson, he too
favors a guest worker program,
combined with harsher penalties
for employers of illegals and
greater economic aid for Mexico
to help provide employment
south of the border. Anderson's
running mate, Patrick Lucey, at