Controversy Over Supreme Court’s Abortion Decision
From the wide range of opinions advanced by the Supreme Court on abortion, it is obvious that its nine justices are not guided by basic law but are simply voicing their separate prejudices--echoing, for the most part, those of the Presidents who appointed them.
Is this the way the law should be determined? Should the moral views of Presidents, of legislators, of sects and our Puritan elders be imposed upon all?
“Morality” seems to vary in direct proportion to wealth and how tight the thumb screw of necessity is tightened. Our well-fed Reagans, Bushes, Ed Meeses, and Orrin Hatches--all males--can well afford their exalted puritan postures. They have it made. Would their attitudes change if they were teen-age tenement girls, with only one dress fit for school, and that one getting too tight? Let them be destitute, hungry, pregnant, and thinking of suicide, and we’ll see.
The controversy will be settled, in the end, by the law of necessity. As the pressures of population and pollution rise, the moral aristocrats will hear them as the rattle of tumbrels. ELLIOT W. MICHENER
El Monte
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