4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 14, 2005 OPINION able £i uit a~u JASON Z. PESICK Editor in Chief SUHAEL MOMIN SAM SINGER Editorial Page Editors AuSON Go Managing Editor EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com NOTABLE QUOTABLE To the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility." - President Bush, accepting responsibility for the federal government's unpreparedness prior to Hurricane Katrina, as reported yesterday by nytimes.com. XHTELLIGE NT Wt S SSA T45s.w ON tog) TA ~AICi61 o O AA KIM LEUNG THE TAK &-CTB B,,,x PES6Nt The debate that just won't die EMILY BEAM LOOKIN FOR AMERICA Know why noth- ing gets, done in Congress, why children shoot up their schools and why half of marriages end in divorce? Birth control. Before legalization of the pill, women felt the true weight of having sex - hefting it around for a good nine months before shoving it out from between their legs. But these days, women are free of the screaming, drooling consequences that nature once bequeathed them and can have all the sex they like. And oh, how they do. Hard-working men like the boys up in Washington can't do their jobs because they are too exhausted from trying to please their wives' and girlfriends' insatiable desire for sex. With the total abandonment of sexual restraint among women, we have loosened the tethers on all sorts of immoral behavior. Our children see sex on television and shoot their friends, and marriage never stands a chance when men are forced to marry deflowered women. Or at least that's what it seems Wisconsin Rep. Dan LeMahieu (R) must be thinking in his anachronistic assault on women's repro- ductive rights. Arguing against birth control made sense - in the 1950s - when a wom- an's place was under her husband, patiently waiting for it to be over. Since then, women have taken control of their bodies, and you know what? History has since disproved all those fears about rampant promiscuity and the end of American values that LeMahieu has managed to retain. Why has this become an issue again? This is the guy who erroneously declared emergency contraception to be "chemical abortion" and asserted that birth control and emergency contraception encourage promis- cuity among women. By sponsoring a bill that would prohibit the University of Wisconsin or' anyone on university property from "advertis- ing, prescribing or dispensing" birth control, LeMahieu has taken on the burden of ensur- ing that parents can send their daughters off to college with the confidence that public uni- versities keep them safe from the weaknesses of the flesh. No birth control, no sex. That's how it works, isn't it? Unbelievably enough, a majority of the Wisconsin state Assembly actually listened to LeMahieu, and the bill passed last June with a 49-41 vote. The legislation specifi- cally targets emergency contraception, but months before it passed, Wisconsin Attor- ney General Peggy Lautenschlager made it quite clear that the language is vague enough to be extended to "cover other forms of oral and hormonal contraception." Fortunately, the legislation poses little direct threat to the women of Wisconsin's universities - even if the bill survives the state Senate, Wiscon- sin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) has promised to veto it. What is frightening, however, is how the bill opens up new avenues to restrict wom- en's rights and rekindles a debate supposed- ly settled decades ago, halting any progress toward reducing gender inequality. When we read about some states making EC available over the counter, it would seem that women are making progress. But that's only if we ignore the heaps of legislation that are doing just the opposite. Take Wisconsin, for instance: There's the bill approved by the state Assembly last June that allows doctors to withhold information about treatments they morally oppose, even if it endangers the life of a patient. Tomorrow, state legislators will hear a bill allowing pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control based on moral objec- tions. And don't forget legislation proposed by Wisconsin state Sen. Neal Kedzie (R) that allows a doctor to lie about prenatal test results if he suspects it will lead to an abor- tion. For women, these are scary times. Wisconsin is hardly alone. Moral opposi- tion to contraception throughout the United States is emerging with a fervor that belongs to our grandparents' generation. Hippocratic oath-violating "conscience clauses" are pop- ping up nationwide, and four states have already passed laws to allow pharmacists to deny women perfectly legal prescription medication on moral grounds. Despite LeMahieu's underestimation of the female population's ability to keep its pants buttoned, the legalization of the pill and introduction of emergency contracep- tion didn't induce women to start opening their legs for any man that came their way. Instead, birth control gave women the oppor- tunity to pursue their own interests, even careers, before settling down and starting a family. Empowered with their innocuous pack of pills, the playing field has become just a little more even for women, and birth control has proven to be a pretty good way to reduce abortion rates and to prevent, not promote, teen pregnancy. The Wisconsin bill should be seen exactly for what it is - a direct attack on women's rights. Whether it is pharmacists, doctors or universities denying women access to birth control, such denial is blatant discrimina- tion against women. Although our own gen- eration has no memory of a time before the pill or Roe vs. Wade, lawmakers armed with inflammatory cries of forsaken morality are threatening to change that. Conservative legislators like LeMahieu have exposed one more place to chip away at women's rights, one that we once thought safe. But then again, who are we to complain? They're only trying to protect us. W Beam can be reached at ebeam@umich.edu. Ann Arbor's new downtown DAVID BETTS PONTIFICATIONS *I P eter Calthorpe changed my life. It was Winter term 2004 and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning held a series of debates about urban design - The Michigan Debates on Urbanism. The only rea- son I went to the debate about New Urbanism is because my Architecture 212 GSI was offering extra credit for attendance. The only reason I was even in Architecture 212 was because of a childhood desire to design the next Tiger Stadium, and even though I had missed that opportunity, I decided I might as well see what this architecture stuff was about. The first presenter of the evening was Peter Calthorpe, an urban designer from California. During his presentation, he talked about some of the basic ideas behind New Urbanism: the need for mixed-use development, walkability, not con- ceding to the car as the only form of transportation and humane, people-oriented design. Something about his presentation was enchanting and by the end of the night, I was basically opposed to the suburb in all forms. I always felt weird about build- ing subdivisions on what used to be cornfields, but Calthorpe's lecture on New Urbanism as a move- ment gave me the ammunition to express my dis- comfort with suburbia as I knew it. As a nationwide movement, New Urbanism is picking up significant steam. Inspired by the likes of Jane Jacobs, author of "Death and Life of American Cities," and the failures of many cit- ies to deal with their loss of population and the growth of their surrounding suburbs, New Urban- ism makes the pedestrian its focus. The Congress For the New Urbanism gives out annual awards to the architecture and design projects around the world that best represent the goals of New Urban- ism. The Michigan Land Use Institute's ideas for smart growth are based loosely on concepts of New Urbanism. At some point, the city of Ann Arbor started to pay attention to New Urbanism and hired Calthorpe's firm to make recommen- dations for increasing residential density in the downtown/campus area. In late July 2005,I attended the first public plan- ning workshop that is a part of Calthorpe Asso- ciates' process. Held in the ballroom of a senior citizen building downtown, I was the only black person in the room and one of about 20 of more than 200 who was under 25 years of age. There was a tangible sense in the building that people wanted downtown to stay as is. One person in my group during the workshop was wholly opposed to high-rise buildings of any kind. Even when the room reached a consensus that a high rise building for this exercise was only 4-8 stories tall, hardly a skyscraper, she was still so upset that she decided to protest the validity of the entire activity. Whether people like it or not, Ann Arbor and the surrounding communities will grow. To accommodate that growth, the area will either have to build out or build up. Based on the fact that there is significant opposition to building out (The Greenbelt is proof of this.) and opposition to build- ing up downtown (as mentioned ab ove), it would be safe to assume that Ann Arbor is at an impasse. Well, that assumption would be wrong. The solution to Ann Arbor's downtown density concerns is to create a second satellite downtown, specifically the area around Briarwood Mall. Cur- rently, the intersection of State and Eisenhower is the epitome of a concession to the automobile. Surrounded by office buildings separated from the street by large grass berms and surface park- ing, State and Eisenhower is a painfully misused area. Right now there is a mini boom in office construction in the area, but the lack of respect for the pedestrian will only exacerbate the horrendous traffic flow. Wolverine Tower, the University-owned build- ing on the Southwest corner of the State and Eisenhower intersection, is a five- to 10-minute walk from Briarwood Mall - easily walking dis- tance. However, people would be considered out of their minds to cross State Street to get from one destination to the other. If residential development were to be introduced immediately surrounding a reconstituted, Town Center-style Briarwood Mall, the area could be turned into a district that fea- tured shopping, dining, employment and living. By increasing pedestrian access to the surround- ing amenities, it could decrease auto-dependent living and give young people a reason to want to stay in the region as opposed to leaving the state for places like New York and Chicago. The City of Ann Arbor should not be pay- ing Calthorpe Associates $200,000 just to plan downtown Ann Arbor. While there is a need to use sound judgment when considering adding build- ings downtown, there is also a need to increase residential density elsewhere in town. Ann Arbor needs to make plans to make Briarwood Mall its second downtown. Betts can be reached at djmbetts@umich.edu. LETTER TO THE EDITOR Editorial Board Members: Amy Anspach, Amanda Burns, Whitney Dibo, Jesse Forester, Mara Gay, Jared Goldberg, Eric Jackson, Brian Kelly, Theresa Kennelly, R aD.' rahl.oir 1 Ar. -t r[ R ns DRsell. Dan Skowrnnski Brian Slace, nren Writer misrepresents conservative beliefs crazy. I found it strange that Manthey says, "So yes, let's allow the people to decide." But then immediatelv he one into hvnothetical liberals that state legislatures will agree with the Blackmun majority?" This means that the neonle of each state would decide on abortion. I