Banner Graphic, Volume 14, Number 182, Greencastle, Putnam County, 7 April 1984 — Page 3
opinion LARRY GIBBS ERIC BERNSEE Publisher Managing Editor
Letters to the Editor Nothing for these kids to do
To the Editor: I am writing in response to the problem of teen-age loitering in Greencastle. I really don’t understand why there has to be such a big deal made over this. Would the authorities, residents, etc. rather have these kids commiting crimes such as vandalism? All they are trying to do is visit with one another, talking harmlessly. Traffic does get out of hand, but I would much rather have them sitting around talking instead of them going out on the county roads and drinking, drag racing or what have you. These are not bad kids; why try to make them that way? I’m wondering: why can’t they do their congregating after hours of the Greencastle Shopping Center? That parking lot would be an ideal place. Maybe everybody should give this a
No sign of improvement
To the Editor: This is the second letter I’ve written about our teen-agers. Don’t all you parents think that it is time that something is done FOR them for a change? This seems to be a “hate teen-age town.” If something is not done, one of these days they are going to get enough of being pushed around and harrassed and they will start pushing back. If this happens, they will be the ones hurt. Did you know that if a student goes to McDonald’s and does not eat inside, that he is not allowed to park on that property to eat the food that he just paid for? Why don’t we start being oldfashioned? Send a sack lunch. An article came out in the BannerGraphic April 5 which stated the city was trying to save money on our park and pool. They were hiring DePauw University students for summer work. This is fine, except most of them do not live in Greencastle. Our kids were mentioned too - not for summer jobs but for loitering. This is what is wrong. There is no effort from anyone to help our kids. Why don’t the Greencastle officials use some of the money from the many citations written recently on teen-agers and do
Graves should be left alone
To the Editor: I went out to Forest Hill Cemetery today to my stepfather’s grave, only to find that the hanging basket poles that I put flowers in had been taken off his grave and the graves of my stepgrandparents. The basket poles were bought out of a flower shop and cost $14.95 each. It was the only way I could put flowers on my step-grandparents graves, as they have no stone, just markers. The pole was right against my stepfather’s stone and wasn’t in the way of mowing or anything. I don’t appreciate this at all, especially when there are other poles
Products too hazardous for U.S. sale: Should they be exported?
By IRVIN MOLOTSKY c. 1984 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON A federal agency has begun to consider the question whether products made to be sold in the United States but withdrawn after being found too hazardous can be exported for sale abroad. Addressing one of the more dramatic cases, Stuart Statler, a member of the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission, observed, “Things that cause asbestiosis here are going to cause it anywhere.” Statler, who spoke at a recent commission hearing, was countered by another commissioner, Terrence M. Scanlon, who expressed doubt that Congress ever gave the commission the task of “policing the world marketplace.” The two other commissioners there is one vacancy were less committed, and so the hearing ended without a clear indication of the commission’s likely decision. The background The problem has its roots in 1973 in the formation of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which was given authority to recall unsafe materials from the market. Since then there has been a question about what becomes of such things. In some cases the product remains on the market because the merchant is not aware of the recall or decides to ignore it. In other cases it accumulates in warehouses. In some cases involving minor problems, such as a too-small safety label on a lawn mower, the recalled items have been exported without controversy. Esther Peterson, who was President Carter’s consumer affairs adviser, asserted that there were “no moral, biological or ethical reasons for treating people differently when it comes to safety.” A lawyer on the other side, Richard H. Gimer, said later that
trial run; give them a set of guidelines to go by, such as no littering, keep the music down, etc. Let’s face it, there is nothing for these kids to do in Greencastle. What if all the teen-agers took their business elsewhere? The stores and restaurants are driving their business way. You have to admit that probably about twothirds of these restaurants’ business comes from the teen-agers. I think business owners ought to give this some thought. I hope that I’ve made my point on this matter. Maybe I’ve even aroused a few people. I think this should be discussed once in a while in favor of the kids, instead of reading in the paper about how many “teen-age trespassers” were arrested over the weekend. J.M. Greencastle
something useful FOR them? Give them a chance. We are supposed to set an example for young people. As things stand, they are afraid to drive in town after dark, especially on weekends. Our youngest daughter is 10 years old and there is no way we will live around here when she becomes a teen-ager. We will not put her through the situation that exists now and shows no signs of improving. We are not asking for a lot. What would it cost to make just one place in town where they could visit, park and talk? At this time there is no place they are welcome, unless it is to spend their money. Have we come to the place where money is more important than people? Are our kids going to be able to park in our city park this summer? Parents, if you are concerned, write to your congressman. We did. We ask his help in some kind of a fair deal for our children. If we don’t do something there is no one to do it for us. Write to: Congressman John Myers, Room 2448, Rayburn Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20015. Thelma Cox rural Greencastle
for hanging baskets on other graves not as nice as the ones I have on my stepgrandparents’ graves. A friend of mine also had a basket pole on her husband’s grave and it too was against the stone and wasn’t in the way. Now it’s gone. I have no idea who took them off or where they went, but it is not appreciated at all. A person’s loved ones’ graves should be left alone as long as they are in accordance with the rules of the cemetery. I don’t have too many gripes, but this is one thing that burns me up. P.A. VanZant Greencastle
this presumed that “if we have a standard regulating something, then no one abroad should be able to buy it.” The only witnesses at the recent commission hearing were consumer advocates such as Mrs. Peterson. Gimer, asked why industry representatives had chosen not to appear, said they probably sensed a “hostile environment.” The industry expects to submit its views in writing, and the commission hopes to issue its decision in May. Against exports In her testimony, Mrs. Peterson said it would be wrong for the commission to “retreat from a pro-safety standard without direction from the courts or Congress.” It would be bad for American export policy, Mrs. Peterson said, to let such products be sold abroad. “We want ‘Made in America’ to be a sign of quality and not a warning,” she said. Anne C. Averyt, product safety director of the Consumer Federation of America, said that products designed for the American market and then withdrawn should not be compared with products made for export, which do not come under the Consumer Product Safety Commission. “Products for export,” Mrs. Averyt said, “ are not dangerous product mistakes. Manufacturers who design products solely for the world market do not deliberately design pacifiers that choke infants, hairdryers that spit asbestos, coffee pots with handles that unexpectedly fall off, or liquid petroleum gas water heater controls that stick in the open position.” The commission voted 4 to 1 last fall to allow export of products that had been recalled in the United States under another law, the Flammable Fabrics Act, and Commissioner Scanlon suggested it would be appropriate to establish a uniform position for goods involved in all three laws: the Flammable Fabrics Act, the Hazardous Substances Act and the Consumer Products Safety Act.
'Strategy one of gradualism'
Follow IM AACP lead, anti-abortionists told
By E.R. SHIPP c. 1984 N.Y. Times News Service CHICAGO Opponents of abortion must follow the example set by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People if they are to win a reversal of the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision legalizing abortion, legal experts said here last weekend. In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the association succeeded in obtaining a reversal of the doctrine of separate but equal, which was first upheld by the High Court in 1895. John T. Noonan Jr., a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, said: “Essentially that strategy was one of gradualism, taking the easiest, most outrageous cases first, dealing with segregation at the graduate school level, then with segregation at the law school level, piercing the fraud that there were separate but equal facilities there and eventually, step by step, getting the judges and the country to see that separate but equal was a fraud everywhere. “That is the pattern that beckons to this movement.” Noonan was one of a dozen scholars and litigators who took part in a conference here Saturday sponsored by Americans United for Life, the legal arm of the antiabortion movement. The conference, billed as a strategy session, dealt with steps to be taken in the battle to overturn the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade, from lobbying for state laws to choosing the courts in which to fight test cases to deciding what to attack first. President Reagan sent a White House aide to express his “continuing high regard for the goals” of the abortion opponents. Among the 500 people attending were members of the clergy, lawyers, law students, physicians, officials of the National Right to Life Committee, a member of the United States Civil Rights Commission and ordinary citizens. Noticeably absent were any blacks, despite the conference’s emphasis upon the NAACP and its assertion that abortion had a disproportionate impact on blacks. Steven P. Baer, education director for Americans United for Life, said that blacks had been slow to embrace the antiabortion movement. Strategists, who likened their meeting to one held in 1931 by Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers, outlined the advantages and disadvantages of a “frontal assault” or a “siege leading to erosion, then collapse.”
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Norma McCorvey, 36, is the Dallas mother and house painter whose desire to have an abortion was the basis for a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1973. To legal scholars, she is simply “Jane Roe”, the fictitious name McCorvey used when her two attorneys filed her historic lawsuit. (AP Laserphoto) In the Roe decision, seven judges on the Supreme Court held that the right to privacy encompassed a woman’s decision to have an abortion. The court said that the mother’s privacy right prevented governmental interference in the first trimester. States would be able to restrict or ban abortions only after the fetus had reached the point of “viability,” that is,
When asked what might be sold abroad if the agency now permitted it, Statler listed pajamas treated with the fire-retardant Tris, which has been shown to cause cancer, and “probably an awful lot of paint containing lead, spackling compounds with asbestos, a miter saw in which blades went flying off.” For exports A spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, R.K. Morris, said his organization had not taken a position before the commission, but offered general comments. “The standards about complying or noncomplying are cultural issues,” Morris said. “United States exporters should not be hampered in foreign markets because of standards designed for the United States. The foreign country has the opportunity to block it, and the United States responsibility is met by notification.” Morris said of American companies: “They shouldn’t carry the baggage of United States requirements abroad. They should be allowed to meet foreign requirements.” The anxieties expressed at the commission meeting, Morris said, impaired other values, among them competitiveness. “We’d like to see the United States place a higher priority on competitiveness,” he said. * Under the notification procedure in use for material failing to meet the flammable fabrics standards, a manufacturer tells the commission it plans to export a product. The commission then notifies the embassy of the country involved and the manufacturer must wait for 30 days. “If it is that egregious,” Morris said, “it is unlikely that the foreign government would allow the import.” Morris said there were many instances in which a product manufactured in the United States was identical with a product made in another country. Morris asked, should not the
April 7,1984, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic
where it had the ability to survive outside the womb. A state’s interest in protecting "the potentiality of human life” would outweigh the mother’s interest after viability, then put at 28 weeks after conception, unless the life or health of the mother was at risk. In that case, a late term abortion would be legal. Abortion foes argue that because physicians broadly define “health” to include social, economic and familial factors, women can in essence freely obtain abortions at any stage. Since 1973, millions of abortions have been performed in this country, including a number of that have resulted in live births. In 1980, the National Centers for Disease Control say, 1.6 million abortions were performed, including 13,000 after the 21st week. In an abortion case last year, the majority of the Court reaffirmed the Roe decision, but in a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor urged a rethinking of the notion of “viability” and the point at which the state’s interest became paramount. Abortion foes have taken that dissent, joined in by Justices Byron R. White and William H. Rehnquist, as the launching point for their renewed fight. Victor G. Rosenblum, a Northwestern University law professor who successfully argued the 1900 Supreme Court case that prohibited use of Medicaid funds for abortions, suggested lobbying for state laws to prohibit late-term abortions. Then, he said, test cases could be devised to defend such statutes and at the same time chip away at one of the holdings of the Roe decision: that the state has a limited interest in protecting the unborn child. In such a case, he and others said, the “humanness” of the unborn child would be proven, along with evidence that the fetus was capable of feeling pain and thus suffered in an abortion. They would also introduce evidence that with the medical technology of today, a fetus was “viable” very early in the second trimester. An abortion at this point, Noonan said, is like “putting to death a being that is very much like a newborn baby.” * Many of those at the conference, including leaders of the Right to Life Committee, felt that no litigation could be successful until abortion opponents were appointed to the Supreme Court. Others disagreed. William B. Ball, a constitutional lawyer, said: “The rightness or wrongness of this case of ours doesn’t depend on who is on the court. I don’t exclude at all the possibility of reasoning, experience and new facts opening the eyes of people right now on the court.”
American product be permitted to compete with the identical product abroad? “My view is that export has always been allowed,” Gimer said, asserting that the opponents had misread a 1978 action by Congress. Rather than limiting the exports, Gimer said, the action permitted it. “There’s a misconception that there’s a policy precluding export,” he said. “There is no such published policy of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.” Gimer rested part of his argument on the definition of what constituted a banned or recalled product. “I agree with the basic proposition that unless something is a banned product that neither the law nor the commission's policy precludes the export of the product,” Gimer said. “Something withdrawn voluntarily from the market is not automatically contraband.” He said that upwards of 99 percent of the goods recalled from the American market since creation of the commission were voluntarily withdrawn and therefore were never subject to an adjudication placing them under the commission. The outlook Statler said he had an open mind but was “sympathetic” to the view of those opposing export, and Scanlon has asked for consistency with the flammable fabrics decision allowing exports. Their votes might cancel each other’s. The chairman of the commission, Nancy Harvey Steorts, seems to be leaning toward opponents of export. The fourth member of the commission, Sandra Brown Armstrong, has not indicated her opinion. A 2-to-2 deadlock is thus possible. If this happens, the previous policy would remain in effect. The consumer groups interpret this to block exports and the manufacturers interpret it otherwise, so it might take a trial to sort it out.
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