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NATIONAL NEWS

Reagan Calls for End to Legal Aid

President Reagan is seeking the abolition of the Legal Services Corporation (Legal Aid), the only program which provides access to justice for the poor. The President's proposed budget for 1982 is requesting "zero funding" for the Corporation. State governments would be free to finance legal aid for the poor with a portion of the Federal block grants they would receive under the Administration's budget-cutting proposals, but they would not be required to do so. Critics of the proposal said it would wipe out many legal aid offices that serve the poor in noncriminal cases and would subject those that remain to the political whims of state and local officials whom they often battle in court.

The Federal Government began financing legal aid offices around the country in 1965. Legal aid groups often became embroiled in political battles with state and local officials, including Reagan when he was Governor of California.

Eileen Hoats, a representative of Community Action for Legal Services, a New York legal aid office, said that legal aid lawyers spend most of their time representing poor people with familiar legal problems-"elderly people being evicted, people who are entitled to food stamps but don't get them, handicapped children who aren't allowed to go to school." The office uses its $10 million in Federal assistance to handle 50,000 cases a year. "No private lawyer is going to take these cases," she said. "There's just no place else for these people to go."

But legal aid lawyers have also brought a substantial number of class actions and other lawsuits over the years that forced Federal, state and local governments as well as private employers to increase health, welfare and other benefit payments to poor people. Such cases have involved legal aid lawyers in political controversy, and have aroused the opposition of many politicians, especially conservatives.

The battle to save Legal Services will be fierce, and will first be fought in the Senate and House Budget

Civil Rights Funds Cut

According to a report by Kathy Sawyer appearing in the March 12 issue of The Washington Post, the Reagan administration has cut the budgets of all three major federal civil rights agencies, thereby reducing services to people seeking protection from discrimination.

The staff of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which enforces civil rights laws in employment, will be reduced by nearly 10 percent under a cut of about $20 million next year. A cut of $32 million is scheduled for the year after. This would seriously affect the agency's backlog of cases which was scheduled to be eliminated by 1982. This problem is compounded by the fact that the agency's workload keeps increasing since it has recently been given jurisdiction over the age discrimination and equal pay laws (in addition to the Title VII cases involving race, color, sex, religion and national origin). religion).

The smaller Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in the Department of Health and Human Services, an agency which enforces several civil rights laws in schools, colleges, and other institutions, will also lose 10 percent of its staff with a cut of nearly $900,000.

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), the part of the Labor Department which enforces antidiscrimination laws in organizations working under federal contract, will lose about 6 percent of its employees over a 2-year period. As a result, the OFCCP will reduce by 20 percent the number of reviews it expects to perform to determine whether contractors are complying with the law.

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Committees. We urge you to concentrate your efforts for mobilization of support for Legal Services on members of these Committees, the Ohio members of which are Sen. Howard Metzenbaum in the Senate, and Reps. Delbert L. Latta and Ralph S. Regula in the House. If your Congressional members are not on the Budget Committees, ask them to convey their strong feelings of support for Legal Services to their colleagues who sit on the Committees. Members need to hear from home, from clients who have been represented by Legal Services, and from community groups who testify to the important work performed

by Legal Services.

The Budget Committees are holding hearings on the 1982 budget now. Legal Services Corporation needs to be an independent agency, not part of the Administration's Block Grant proposal, which would give states the discretion to fund advocacy for the poor.

Your support is urgently needed now. For further information contact Women in Legal Services, c/o National Center on Women and Family Law, Inc., 799 Broadway, Room 402, New York, NY 10003; telephone (212) 674-8200.

Methods of the Moral Majority

By Deborah Van Kleef

Perhaps no other question is as emotionally charged for Americans of all races and classes as that of whether abortion should remain legal. As a reproductive rights activist, I would be the first to admit that it raises difficult questions, but I believe it is important to understand that the battle for abortion rights encompasses more than the matter of whether a woman may choose to end an unwanted pregnancy. Abortion is, of course, an issue of women's rights. In the March issue of What She Wants, Chris Link pointed out that:

The ultimate goal of the Moral Majority is not only the criminalization of abortion, but a return to traditional roles for women. A quick way to force women out of the workplace is to take away their ability to plan their reproductive lives and space their pregnancies.

If the anti-abortion movement were only a backlash against recent changes in women's lives and expectations, it would be sufficient reason to devote ourselves to fighting it. We need to be equally concerned, however, about the connections between this movement and the various organizations and individuals that comprise the "New Right." Chris cited Rhonda Copelon's remarks at a rally here January 22:

Copelon pointed out that the so-called "Moral Majority" is using the abortion issue as the cornerstone for a repressive movement which is anti-labor, inherently racist, and which supports military expenditures over human needs. The Left cannot excuse itself from the abortion fight because it is a "women's issue;" the same people we are fighting in the antichoice movement are those who are bankrolling "right-to-work" laws and militarism overseas and anti-busing campaigns in the U.S.

This observation is not based on a vague feeling that it is "us" against "them," with an equally vague sense of who "they" are. The connections are evident, and I think it takes only a few examples to convey the extent of the threat the "Right-to-Life" movement represents.

A clear instance of the relationship between the Right and "Right-to-Life" is the number of staff and board members shared by groups within those two camps. Paul Weyrich, a board member of the Life Amendment Political Action Committee (LAPAC), is director of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (CSFC), an organization that supports reactionary congressional candidates. Leaders of Pro-Life Political Action Committee (Pro-Life PAC) have been involved with the American Conservative Union and Conservative Democrats of America. Pro-Life PAC operates out of the office of Lee Edwards, who has worked for New Guard, the newsletter of Young Americans for Freedom, the National Council Against Forced Busing and the National

Right to Work Committee.

Equally revealing are the tactics used by the right in electoral battles. Most of us have heard of the "hit list" LAPAC uses to target pro-choice senators for defeat, and we know that those senators tend to be liberals in such areas as foreign policy, civil rights and labor. We may be unaware, however, that the hit-listed legislators have more in common with each other on those issues than they do on abortion, or that some are anything but firm advocates of reproductive choice.

Frank Church, for example, takes a conservative stand on abortion; he earned his place on the list by his support for labor and civil rights, and his opposi-

LEGAL ABORTION

tion to American intervention abroad.

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REEF HOFAKG 15 PIT OF ENDU· HOLES AND AN'T HOBOPY OGING TO RECOGNIZE IT

The 1978 Iowa senatorial race, in which Roger Jepson defeated Dick Clark, appeared to be a contest over abortion; LAPAC claimed credit for Clark's loss, as an anti-choice victory. In fact, most of Jepson's funding came, not from anti-choice organizations, but from a variety of other conservative interest groups. Iowans who voted against abortion were, whether they knew it or not, voting against gun control, labor unions and the Panama Canal Treaty, and for apartheid and American corporate investments in South Africa.

All but one of the candidates endorsed by LAPAC and Pro-Life PAC in 1978 were also backed by CSFC, the National Conservative Political Action Committee and Gun Owners of America.

The Right, then, is skillfully exploiting the feelings of many Americans on the volatile issue of abortion to suppress debate on issues of equal importance, and to elect legislators who will advance its programs. The Right-to-Life Society and other grassroots organizations provide the Right with a ready-made constituency and a pool of volunteer labor. I am not suggesting that all anti-abortion activists are the well-meaning dupes of a few powerful schemers. I would guess that the vast majority of the thousands of women who picket, phone, lobby and bake for fetal rights also hold views on domestic and foreign policy that line up pretty well with those. of the (mostly male) leaders of their movement. We are

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