Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 6—The Georgia Bulletin, April 28,1983
Hatch Amendment Goes To Senate Without Recommendation
BY JIM LACKEY
WASHINGTON (NC) -- The Hatch-Eagleton
amendment on abortion is headed for a debate by the
full Senate, but it is going there with less than
enthusiastic support from the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
In a dramatic 9-9 tie vote April 19 the committee
failed to approve the amendment, which attempts to
remove a right to abortion from the Constitution.
Instead the committee decided to forward the
amendment to the full Senate “without
recommendation.”
The committee’s action means that Sen. Orrin Hatch
(R-Utah), who first introduced the Hatch amendment
in 1981, will get his long-awaited floor debate on the
proposal. But the vote also indicated some slippage in
support for the measure, which was approved by the
same committee last year on a 10-7 vote.
Despite the tie vote Hatch was pleased that his
amendment was headed to the Senate floor, where
Hatch has been promised a debate on the proposal by
Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.)
sometime this spring.
“This will be the first time in history that the Senate
will hold a full debate on abortion,” Hatch said shortly
after the committee action. “At least we have a vehicle
so we can debate all aspects of abortion.”
As in the subcommittee, which approved the revised
Hatch-Eagleton amendment March 24 after only 10
minutes of discussion, the full Judiciary Committee
also disposed of the amendment after only a brief
discussion, prompting one opponent of the measure,
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), to say the constitutional
amending process should not be taken so lightly.
Baucus, while praising Hatch for meeting the
abortion issue “head on” through a constitutional
amendment rather than through simple legislation, said
the effect of the 10-word amendment is “entirely
unclear” because it does not spell out the rights and
obligations of state and federal governments in dealing
with abortion.
As approved by both the Constitution subcommitee
and the full Judiciary Committee the amendment
reads, “A right to abortion is not secured by this
Constitution.”
Hatch’s original proposal also had included a second
section giving the federal and state governments
concurrent power to regulate abortion. But that
section was dropped at the March 24 subcommittee
meeting after Sen. Thomas Eagleton (D-Mo.) suggested
that the Hatch amendment’s first 10 words could get
the greatest number of Senate votes while still reversing
the Supreme Court on abortion.
As the Judiciary Committee’s roll-call vote took
place, it initially appeared that the amendment had
been approved on a 9-8 vote. But Sen. Alan K.
Simpson (R-Wyo.), who had passed on the initial roll
call, switched his vote to “no,” creating the 9-9 tie.
In last year’s 10-7 vote Simpson had voted for the
Hatch amendment.
Another committee member who supported the
amendment last year but voted against it this time was
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.). Biden told the committee
he voted for the Hatch amendment last year so it could
he brought to the floor for a vote, but said he was
voting against it this year because he opposed a “states’
rights” approach on abortion.
Though the Hatch amendment was approved last
year by the committee it was withdrawn by Hatch last
September in exchange for a promise from Baker that
floor time for the proposal would be scheduled before
this summer.
Besides Hatch, other committee members who voted
for the amendment were Sens. Strom Thurmond
(R-S.C.), Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.), Robert Dole (R-Kan.),
John East (R-N.C.), Charles Gressley (R-Iowa),
Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala.), Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.)
and Howell Heflin (D-Ala.).
Voting against the amendment, besides Simpson,
Biden and Baucus, were Sens. Charles Mathias (R-Md.),
Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.),
Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), Howard Metzenbaum
(D-Ohio) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).
QUEST FOR JOBS - A sheriff’s deputy directs
a line of traffic leading to the Teledyne Monarch
Rubber Company in Hartville, Ohio, where
thousands of applicants from Ohio and West
Virginia went to apply for no more than 100 jobs.
More than 7,000 applications were handed out in
first two hours. In Buffalo, N.Y., (bottom) an
estimated 10,000 to 15,000 waited in line outside
the Memorial Auditorium to apply for 200
federally-funded public service jobs. A lottery
system will be used to select 1,000 applications
from which the job will be filled. (NC Photos)
“Baby Doe" Rule Barred
Pending Court Appeal
WASHINGTON (NC) - The U.S. Court of
Appeals in Washington has denied a request by the
Reagan administration to retain a rule preventing
hospitals from denying treatment to handicapped
newborns pending an appeal of a lower court’s
ruling that the rule is invalid.
The appeals court ruling April 21 followed by
one week a decision by U.S. District Court Judge
Gerhard Gesell, who said the rule did not allow
sufficient time for public comment before it was
put into effect, that it was a violation of federal law,
that it was issued too hastily and was based on
“inadequate consideration” of all factors involved.
The rule required hospitals receiving federal funds
to post notices saying that denial of customary care
to handicapped infants violates federal law. The
notice included a new, toll-free government “hot
line” for use in reporting suspected violations of the
A spokesman for the Department of Health and
Human Services said it would publish a notice in the
Federal Register saying the rule is no longer in
effect but would continue to maintain the hotline.
The rule followed the controversy that developed
in April 1982 when a baby born with Down’s
syndrome in Indiana was denied food and an
operation which could have corrected his deformed
esophagus.
» *•
♦ >
%
% . *
% W
%
Toronto Archdiocese
Puts Millions To Jobs
TORONTO (NC) - The Toronto Archdiocese and the'
Canadian government have joined forces in two
multimillion-dollar projects to create jobs for about 700
welfare recipients. ^
Begun in mid-April, the projects are to provide 16,380
weeks of work. Their projected cost is about $11.1
million Canadian ($9 million U.S.), with the government
providing $6.5 million (about $5.3 million U.S.) and the v ,,
archdiocese funding the rest.
The projects will involve repairs, renovations and
modifications to 37 churches, a refuge for transients,
university student housing and a summer camp in the *.
archdiocese.
In order to provide the jobs, said the Toronto
archdiocesan chancellor, Auxiliary Bishop Leonard Wall,
the archdiocese decided “to accelerate its projected'* «■
five-year plan of repairs and renovations.”
He said that by accelerating its repair and renovation
plans the archdiocese was undertaking a financial burden,
but he called it “a moral solution to the problem” of **' *
unemployment.
. The archdiocese, working through contractors, is
providing the management and skilled labor for the
project, while the government funds will pay the wages of** ’
the unskilled workers doing the actual renovations and
repairs.