European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - August 9, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes sunday August 9,1987 columns William f. Buckley understanding the other Side of abort on Issue it is a pity of the most time washing proportions that most people who believe that abortion is of can not speak to people who do no think so and vice versa. The president s recent proposed regulations lie would bar family planning units from listing abortion As an option Are a Case in Point. His critics accuse him of violating regulations the Law and the Constitution. In is apparently impossible for Many pro Choice advocates to understand that there Are sane and reason Able people in America who believe Hal abortion is a Homicidal act. And it is apparently impossible for Many pro life advocates to understand that there Art sane and reasonable people in America who believe abortion is the equivalent of preferring Pepsi cola to coca cola. Now if a person in authority believes that abortion is homicide one should reasonably expect that he would do everything within his constitutional Power to discourage acts of homicide. It is relevant to quote or. Douglas Gould who is a vice president of the planned parenthood federation of America. He Ells w How his clinics operate. The Story by Clifford May is from he july 31 new York times at whatever Type of clini.," or. Gould said the Normal practice is a woman comes in and says she thinks she s pregnant. She s then tested to make sure. If it s determined that she is pregnant we ask her How she feels about in. If she says great we say congratulations and Lell her about three places she George will can go to for prenatal care. However or. Gould said if he client is unhappy about being pregnant or unsure How she feels we say Here arc your options " the options he went on Are a full term pregnancy after which the woman keeps the baby or surrenders it for adoption or an end to the pregnancy and if that s her decision we Tell her about three places she can go to have the now one can imagine or. Gould going further in dealing with a pregnant woman. And there is a third possibility. Vou can Bear the child and decide Afler the birth whether you arc Happy or unhappy to have that child. If you Are Happy then congratulations. If not Here Are three clinics that will Lake the child and exterminate a you can hear the screeches but infanticide is against the Law and abortion is not. That is True the right to life people acknowledge but the legality of abortion came in by judicial Mukase and its Pedigree is therefore not democratically tested. And even if in were we would simply be facing one More example of a bad Law such As the Law that condoned slavery. You cannot blame those presidents opposed to slavery who took every Opportunity for instance in backing the Missouri Compromise and other legislation to discourage the spread of slavery. Nor would you condemn a president in the 1850s who proclaimed that no Federal subsidies would be made available to slave owners to guarantee a minimum value for their slaves nor against a Law forbidding non slav from lining themselves into slavery. Such persons sane and rational believe that Federal funds ought not to be available Lor the purpose of introducing pregnant women to abortion in order to oblige their wish that they had t got pregnant to begin with. The other View is that the Ter Malion of a pregnancy i a woman s option to be compared with her option to free speech to worship at her own Temple or not to worship at All and to go where she likes. Now. Pro life Folk need to understand that just As n can be said that some highly civilized Folk believed that slavery was a Normal tinman institution Saint Paul John c. Cal Hounsom some people feet that Way about abortion. And As Long As people feel that Way they Are perplexed indignant end outraged at condemnations of their be Havior let alone efforts to restrict it. It is for this Rea son thai one should be no More Temple to scorn a woman who terminates a pregnancy by abortion than one would have been to associate with Thomas Jeffer son slave owner. The theological term for in is Invin Cible ignorance. The vernacular is they have a differ ent View of things. The Christian expression is father forgive them for they know not what they is Here to stay for the foreseeable future. At this Point there can Only be fundamental change a fundamental change evolves in human perceptions of what is and what i an exercisable option in the even of an unwanted pregnancy. Meanwhile both parties should expect opposite parties to do what they can to Advance their positions. Pumi syndic i nationalities9 a recurring problems for soviets putting the Best face on soviet be Havior we can say that glasnost has glitches As current roubles with the tar tars show. Bui the truth is those troubles Are Only the most recent Recrudescence of a perennial soviet problem the nationalities question 1 Hal sets a severe limit on the scope of glasnost. Tartar leaders recently were fuelled from Moscow where a few Hundred cd tar tars were demanding that their original Homeland in the crimean Peninsula be recognized As autonomous. In 1944. 250,000 tartars were deported to Central Asia perhaps 100,000 of them died As punishment for alleged collaboration with German invaders. The Kremlin s disproportionate response to the recent protest included accusations that . Diplomats had worked to inspire nationalistic Manifest the soviet Union is run by a minority russians that is declining numerically relative to Many of ire soviet Union s other nationalities. Like most such minorities that govern resentful groups the russians Are regarded Asar Rogant. They do indeed despise Many Oiher ethnic groups including the tar Tare As soviet leaders often denounce this attitude. On oct. 6, 1922, Lenin was Loo troubled by a Toothache to attend a Central committee meeting but he sent a note i declare War to the death on great russian chauvinism. I shall eat it with All my healthy Teeth As soon As i get rid of this damned he promised thai the presidency of a crucial body should go in turn to a russian a ukrainian a georgian and so but it would take More than 100 and so Forth 10 cover All the ethnic groups scattered across the soviet Union. Besides the essence of the soviet stale is democratic centralism control by a party organized from above and run from the political Center Moscow. This principle is incompatible with any local autonomy. There Are today three kinds of nations. On nation the United states is defined entirely by assent to political principles of Universal Validity. Most nations Are of the second kind. They evolved organically from the Coalescence of religious linguistic and cultural affinities then there Are nations that Are not really nations. They Are aggregations of unreconciled groups held together by Force. Yugoslavia and some african nations Are in this category As is the so Viet Union. The United states is uniquely a nation in Lincoln s precise phrase dedicated to a to be come say truly British is a Complex and protracted process. Diverse millions of immigrants have become full fledged americans in a morning by assenting to its proposition. The soviet regime fancies itself to be like the United states founded on Clear principles universally convincing to minds unclouded by ignorance. But marxism is everything refuted by reality. Marxism is a 19th Century pseudo Sci ence that claims to Lay Bare the inner dynamic of history a dynamic Donven by economic conflict Hal changes with modes of production. Marxism a Sci ence of conflict can not accommodate the most striking fact of the late 20th Century the fact Hal ethnic assertion not class struggle is a prevalent form of conflict from Mecca to Moscow. But then the Hope of communist universality collapsed in August 1914, when socialists in the German Reich Stag voted for credits to finance the War that was beginning. The Solidarity of the International working class was a fiction. The particularities of life the traditional affinities that arc the glue of nations were More powerful More real than the categories spun by Karl Marx. The absence of such glue the presence of powerful centrifugal forces within the soviet Union and the fact that the regime s substitute for cultural homogeneity is a bankrupt ideology All these factors mean Hal the soviet regime can never be More than an occupying Power sustained by Force. Thus glasnost can never be More than a carefully con trolled Kremlin lactic to confuse the West and Moi Vale soviet masses inn a tantalizing Mirage of Freedom just Over a forever receding horizon. If the russians keep on we May have to Send tanks
