For the Record

Big bucks, both pro and anti, went into battle to influence the Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade. Pro-abortion: National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) spent $2.5 million on print, radio, and TV ads; Planned Parenthood, $500,000 in print advertising; Committee to Support Roe v. Wade, $400,000 in TV campaign featuring former Rep. Barbara Jordan, actresses Colleen Dewhurst, Joanne Woodward, and Sigourney Weaver. Anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee put $150,000 into print advertising. . . . Christian Science Monitor’s political analyst, Everett Carll Ladd (of the Roper organization), concludes from study of recent and past polls that the majority of Americans believe abortion “should not be categorically banned,” but also that “it should not be established as an absolute right.” He points out that National Opinion Research Center (U. of Chicago) has, since 1978, regularly asked, “Should a pregnant woman be able to get a legal abortion no matter what the reason?” and has never found the proportion favoring unlimited abortion higher than 39 per cent. … At moment, 37 states ban public funding for abortion. . . . Conservative constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein points out that the larger significance of Webster decision is “that the Supreme Court is now ‘a Reagan Court’ for the next generation in addressing criminal-justice, social- and civil-rights issues.” But also that “the days when losers in the legislative process regularly captured success in the Supreme Court are over.” . . . Somewhat less reasoned was Harry Schwartz’s USA Today scare column on what might happen should the Court uphold Roe v. Wade; “There may well be systematic attempts to assassinate doctors who perform abortions. Or we may have snipers lying in wait to kill pregnant women entering abortion centers.”

Reaction to Tiananmen Square: Harvard civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz told Boston Herald he failed to get prominent leftists lawyer William Kunstler and Left ideologue Noam Chomsky to comment on slaying of student demonstrators. Dershowitz asked: “Where is [the Left’s] anger when rights violations are perpetrated by regimes of the Left?” . . . Gus Hall, national chairman CPUSA, was “shocked” that civilians and soldiers lost their lives in the upheaval. But his condemnation of the massacre was limited to questioning whether “the [Chinese] army had over-reacted.” . . . The Marxist weekly, The Workers World Party, denounced the students “as counterrevolutionaries” and commended the army for “its decisive action.” . . . The usual bleeding-heart liberals were predictably outraged, and many—among them Ed Asner and Mike Farrell (actors), William Sloane Coffin and Randall Forsberg (Nuclear Freezers), Barry Commoner (environmentalist), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Paper-ist), Allen Ginsberg (poet, Beat) —signed a letter in support of the students’ right to demonstrate for democracy. . . . In San Francisco, Reuben Barr (veteran of Abraham Lincoln Brigade) gave evidence in letter to Communist People’s Daily World that he has learned nothing in half a century. “The press, and the President,” he wrote, “who had remained silent or helped every fascist government in South Africa, Palestine, and El Salvador now came out for democracy in China! Throw stones in others’ windows while yours are filthy, fits the current American policy.”

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Big bucks, both pro and anti, went into battle to influence the Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade. Pro-abortion: National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) spent $2.5 million on print, radio, and TV ads; Planned Parenthood, $500,000 in print advertising; Committee to Support Roe v. Wade, $400,000 in TV campaign featuring former Rep. Barbara Jordan, actresses Colleen Dewhurst, Joanne Woodward, and Sigourney Weaver. Anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee put $150,000 into print advertising. . . . Christian Science Monitor’s political analyst, Everett Carll Ladd (of the Roper organization), concludes from study of recent and past polls that the majority of Americans believe abortion “should not be categorically banned,” but also that “it should not be established as an absolute right.” He points out that National Opinion Research Center (U. of Chicago) has, since 1978, regularly asked, “Should a pregnant woman be able to get a legal abortion no matter what the reason?” and has never found the proportion favoring unlimited abortion higher than 39 per cent. … At moment, 37 states ban public funding for abortion. . . . Conservative constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein points out that the larger significance of Webster decision is “that the Supreme Court is now ‘a Reagan Court’ for the next generation in addressing criminal-justice, social- and civil-rights issues.” But also that “the days when losers in the legislative process regularly captured success in the Supreme Court are over.” . . . Somewhat less reasoned was Harry Schwartz’s USA Today scare column on what might happen should the Court uphold Roe v. Wade; “There may well be systematic attempts to assassinate doctors who perform abortions. Or we may have snipers lying in wait to kill pregnant women entering abortion centers.”

Reaction to Tiananmen Square: Harvard civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz told Boston Herald he failed to get prominent leftists lawyer William Kunstler and Left ideologue Noam Chomsky to comment on slaying of student demonstrators. Dershowitz asked: “Where is [the Left’s] anger when rights violations are perpetrated by regimes of the Left?” . . . Gus Hall, national chairman CPUSA, was “shocked” that civilians and soldiers lost their lives in the upheaval. But his condemnation of the massacre was limited to questioning whether “the [Chinese] army had over-reacted.” . . . The Marxist weekly, The Workers World Party, denounced the students “as counterrevolutionaries” and commended the army for “its decisive action.” . . . The usual bleeding-heart liberals were predictably outraged, and many—among them Ed Asner and Mike Farrell (actors), William Sloane Coffin and Randall Forsberg (Nuclear Freezers), Barry Commoner (environmentalist), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Paper-ist), Allen Ginsberg (poet, Beat) —signed a letter in support of the students’ right to demonstrate for democracy. . . . In San Francisco, Reuben Barr (veteran of Abraham Lincoln Brigade) gave evidence in letter to Communist People’s Daily World that he has learned nothing in half a century. “The press, and the President,” he wrote, “who had remained silent or helped every fascist government in South Africa, Palestine, and El Salvador now came out for democracy in China! Throw stones in others’ windows while yours are filthy, fits the current American policy.”