Life and Times

The effective result of the court’s action will be to allow any woman who wants a hospital abortion during the first 20 weeks of her pregnancy to obtain one, simply by requesting it. There are some who fear that the court’s decision will lead to a major increase in the number of abortions performed in California. In fact, however, the ruling merely seems to give the sanction of law to practices long in effect….how is a committee to weigh risk, or gauge the chances of serious impairment, particularly mental impairment? If a woman insists to her doctor that she does not want to continue a pregnancy, that emotionally she cannot accept a baby, what judgment is the doctor or a hospital committee expected to reach about the effect of pregnancy on her mental health? …There are, as we have said before, good and persuasive reasons for the 1967 abortion law. But we also believe that abortion is the least desirable way to deal with unwanted pregnancy. Currently, the Legislature has before it two bills that would help provide alternatives: SB 433 would allow doctors to prescribe contraceptives to minors without parental consent; AB 1470 would require hospitals where abortions are performed to provide patients with information about family-planning services. Both bills should be passed; for medical, personal and social reasons, taking steps to avoid unwanted pregnancies makes more sense than terminating such pregnancies by abortion.

The Supreme Court of California, in a decision of persuasive clarity and wisdom, has found the death penalty unconstitutional under the state’s own constitution…. The deterrent effect is a “vigorously disputed proposition,” the court noted. If there is any deterrent value, it would result only from sure and swift application, but that is not possible. There are other appropriate ways to isolate felons from society, the court concluded. And if the motive is vengeance, that is “incompatible with the dignity of an enlightened society.”The real result is a cruel punishment, the court ruled. The result is “lingering death,” mental anguish, “brutalizing psychological effects” as the condemned await sentence. Some of the 104 in California’s death rows have been there eight years.

The fears are real, but they are unjustified. Reagan and others who have spoken in highly emotional terms have not contributed anything to public understanding…In 30 years up to 1967, an average of little more than six persons a year were put to death in California. To add this number to the list of murderers eligible for parole will hardly change the situation that has prevailed. Murderers hardly ever repeat that crime…. Certainly dangerous prisoners must be kept under control while in prison. Certainly a prisoner considered dangerous and facing trial must not be freed on bail. Certainly a convicted murderer ought not to be paroled without serving the appropriate sentence, and ought not ever to be freed if he is unreformable….You may agree or disagree with the result of the court’s decision -- we ourselves support it -- but you cannot argue it had no right to that decision, unless you are willing to argue the three-part American system of government ought to be dismantled….Time for reflection, and a calm examination of the facts, not a hotblooded rewriting of the Constitution, are what California needs now.

The death penalty has never been carried out without fervent comment on its merits and its horror. Cato argued that “gentleness and pity” would be paid for by the blood of the citizens. But, warned Cicero, “care should be taken that the punishment does not exceed the guilt.”

…the recent State Supreme Court decision holding the death penalty unconstitutional means that persons held in capital cases can no longer be denied bail on that basis. Does that decision also mean that the courts are powerless to keep in custody a person charged with a serious crime and whose release on bail might pose a potential threat to society?…If California judges lack authority to protect the public from potentially dangerous persons through denial of bail, then this should be remedied by the Legislature.

The court decision, by its length, by the variety and occasional contradiction of its opinions, by the diversity of its reservations and dissents, reflects the uncertainty of the nation itself on this question. For the moral and legal aspects have become overwhelmed in the minds of many by questions of personal security in a time of increasing violence in the American society. And fact is not easily separated from opinion, nor reason from emotion. We are convinced that the death penalty is no longer appropriate, if it ever was, in the American system of justice. We would have preferred to see it eliminated by legislative action and constitutional amendment…. The sweep of the decision appears to us just, consistent with the value placed on individual life in America today.

An important measure of the quality of any society is the means it employs to maintain order through law. In the system of justice, few things are more difficult than finding the punishment that fits the crime. This is all the more difficult at a time when the consensus in society doubts that “punishment” is the right word, for the emphasis is on deterrence, not revenge; on correction, not incarceration. The ultimate controversy has to do with the ultimate penalty, death, and the troubling question: Does society ever have the right to take a life?That question is being asked of California voters in Proposition 17 on the November ballot. It is really not quite that simple, but that is the thrust of the proposition. We think it is a bad measure.