Word: approach
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...probation officers where their charges are. A number of states have adopted some form of intensive-supervision probation. In that system, an offender lives at home but must check in with probation officers a number of times each day while also holding a job, often in community service. This approach requires the hiring of more probation officers, but it nevertheless winds up costing only a fraction of the $14,000-to-$30,000 annual expense of keeping an inmate in a cell...
...That approach, however, has raised the ire of many legal experts and women's rights groups. "These cases are attacks on women," says Lynn Paltrow of the A.C.L.U.'s Reproductive Freedom Project. "If states pass laws that make maternal behavior a crime against the fetus, and if the state can create prenatal police patrols for cocaine use, then where would they draw the line?" Opponents note that alcohol use, smoking and other kinds of maternal conduct have also been shown to damage fetuses. Says Paltrow: "For some women, standing on their feet all day is harmful. Will they arrest them...
...even those women who could be assisted. "This sends a clear message to the women most in need of prenatal health, that it is dangerous for them to get help," says Dr. Ira Chasnoff, president of the National Association for Perinatal Addiction Research and Education. "It's a punitive approach that is being taken out of frustration by the legal and medical communities...
What seemed like an easy victory for U.S. policy now appears to call for a more carefully calibrated approach. In February, while Moscow's troop pullout was in progress, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was looking to salvage some political face. He wrote to President Bush asking for U.S. help in setting up an international conference to end the fighting and create a broad-based coalition government that would include the Kabul Communists. Confident that the rebels' star was in the ascendant, the White House refused the request. But disappointment over the guerrillas' military failure has led policymakers to debate...
...Oregon lawmaker opposed to the bill is Democrat Tom Mason. "You can't approach medicine merely as the greatest good for the greatest number of people," he says. "If we do that, why should anyone take care of you after a horrendous traffic accident?" A fair question, since it points to the medical reality that what is merely an option for one individual can be a life-or- death matter for another. Still, until the U.S. is ready for the huge fiscal sacrifices that would make complete medical care available to all, some form of rationing -- with rules clearly established...