Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Advocates think the lessons will keep women from seeking back-alley butchers or resorting to the horrifying home measures, such as inserting coat hangers and douching with Lysol or Coca-Cola, that were common before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal nationwide in 1973. NOW's national headquarters in Washington takes no position on self-help abortions but has not discouraged its local affiliates...
Many feminists call the effort politically misguided. They argue that it gives the wrong impression that abortion is already illegal and unobtainable. They are also concerned that it diverts attention from their battle to keep abortion legal. Whether that battle is won or lost, the pursuit of self-help abortions makes one thing clear, warns Patricia Ireland of NOW: "The demand for abortion will continue and will be met one way or another...
...what Moscow has long denied: that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact included a secret protocol that called for the Soviet takeover of the Baltics. But Baltic deputies serving on a commission to study the pact complain that Moscow representatives want to stop short of drawing the necessary conclusions about the legal standing of their republics in the union. Says Estonian Popular Front leader Rein Veidemann: "We must solve the Baltic question and recognize the fact that we were first occupied and then annexed." But what would belated recognition of that historical reality actually accomplish? "Nothing," says Latvian Ideology Secretary Kezbers flatly...
...Baltic reform movement has primarily been new ideas, whether blueprints for popular-front movements or drafts of laws regulating economic "cost accounting" at the local level. But when Estonians do speak, they get a hearing. Last November the Estonian supreme soviet passed amendments to the local constitution, investing ultimate legal authority with the republic rather than with Moscow. That act of defiance brought on a finger-wagging lecture from Gorbachev. But the tiny Baltic state held its ground, and Moscow pursued the matter no further. Says party chief Valjas: "Estonian persistence has brought results...
...prompts many readers to assume that such failings are widespread. Many a journalist has felt the temptation, as Malcolm allegedly did, either to skip the drudgery of poring over notes or, having perused them in vain, to concoct the perfect quote to make the point. Such behavior may be legal. But as every journalist knows, it is, in Malcolm's own words, "morally indefensible...