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Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
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Wednesday, June 15, 2022 Vol. 75 No. 32
Professors weigh in the on the future of reproductive healthcare JANA HAMADE copy editor
The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision once instilled the protective right to safely accessing abortion in the United States for decades. With the possibility of that decision being overturned, those options may become non-existent in many states, where more restrictive measures will be set in place. Corey Stevens, a professor in the women’s studies department, said they were really devastated upon first viewing the draft. They said they feel that abortion rights are really key to womens health and equality and autonomy over their bodies in this country, and that they personally engaged in a lot of activism around the issue. Stevens said there has been a concerted effort for decades to erode Roe v. Wade. “The state of Illinois is going to become one of these last bastions in the Midwest, so we will see probably people who have the means to do so travel to get abortions,” Stevens said. Tim Kalinonwski, coordinator of prelaw, said it will be up to each state’s constitution to take its own restrictive measures. He predicts that people will manage
to create access to abortions regardless of regulations. “To completely overturn Roe v. Wade and start to redefine the abortion decision out of privacy, that does surprise me … It leaves it up to every state to come up with their own restrictions, or not. You start to look at what the state constitution says,” Kalinowski said. “I think you will see organizations the same way people against abortion were setting up adoption agencies and medical support things when Roe v. Wade was the law, setting up transportation and making it easier for women to get to where they need to. Maybe in the first year you will get more people crossing the state line, but I think in the long run it’s going to look very similar to what it does now.”
The possibility of Roe v. Wade overturning may lead to more overturned decisions
Timothy Lewis, assistant professor of political science, said he thinks targeting women’s reproductive rights is the first step in infringing upon the rights of other minority groups under the 14th Amendment, which states that you cannot allow states to infringe upon that privacy that a woman has the right with her licensed physician to make a private choice about her body.
“This right to privacy that has to be protected by the 14th Amendment was also the basis of cases before and after Roe — the cases that gave us interracial marriage, the cases that gave us gay marriage. If you are saying that the constitutional basis of Roe is flawed, then so is the basis of all these other cases,” Lewis said. “There are going to be states that are going to attack gay rights, gay marriage, and so these other rights extended to minority people are in danger.” Lewis said this is the first time that the Supreme Court has reversed a decision to take away rights. He said this sets a very dangerous precedent for a country that is already highly divided, where the Constitution is at a very weak point. “This was a decision based off not the constitution, but five justices’ individual moral opinions. This was not a very
wise move, I don’t think this was a very constitutional decision. We’re at a point where issues shouldn’t be issues. A woman’s right to make a decision about her life, a lifeor-death decision shou ld n’t be an issue in an advanced d e m o c r ac y,” Lewis said.
will do or what others will do if they are putting together their own firearms for example, is [that] they’ll just manufacture the firearm in a way where it doesn’t have two of the features,” Moffett said.
and Lincoln middle schools both having a police presence within the vicinity. Libby Koonce is a teacher who teaches math at EHS. She said she has been around armed law enforcement in schools for as long as she’s been teaching and it helps alleviate some of her worries. “At Liberty it’s one floor, it’s big and it’s spread out but it’s one floor and [the officer] has easy access to get where she needs to go. The high school [has] a lot more kids, there’s a lot of space to cover,” Koonce said. Although the schools have law enforcement present, Koonce said she still feels scared of the possibility of a shooting where she works or where her kids go to school. “You always think it won’t happen in your town or anything, but you look at some of the demographics of some of the places that it’s happened and it’s happening in towns very similar to Edwardsville,” Koonce said. Koonce said she remembers the Columbine shooting of 1998 while she was still in high school at EHS and heard how much people compared the two areas. “I just remember all of the comparisons that happened between that town and that school and EHS and it was really concerning,” Koonce said. Koonce said in many ways the administrative staff at EHS have helped her feel more prepared due to the amount of drills and the desire for teachers to not shy away from talking about the matter and discussing a plan. “I feel like we do take the necessary precautions. The administrative staff, the teaching staff, the security, we all take it very seriously,” Koonce said. “What’s really sad is that the kids take it really seriously. This isn’t one that they laugh and they joke through like a tornado drill. I feel like they understand the severity of the situation.”
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Outlawing abortion could lead to danger for patients and doctors alike
Lewis said he thinks overturning Roe v. Wade will prompt people to have more unsafe and dangerous methods of abortions. “Now taking away that people can go into licensed medical clinics, have medical and psychiatric counseling, be in a safe and sterile environment to have an abortion pushes people to unsafe, unsensisee ROE V. WADE on page 3
Educators and families worry about safety as school shootings increase BRANDON WELLS sports editor
Warning: This piece contains discussion of school shootings. As school shootings continue to occur at an alarming rate, educators are left worried about what might happen at their school. On May 24, a school shooting happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. This specific shooting marked a slight change in the pattern when compared to previous shootings due to it taking place at an elementary school with much younger children. While not the only K-12 shooting, it is the most deadly one Texas has ever experienced. Another elementary school shooting and the deadliest K-12 shooting in U.S. history was the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, an event that lit a spark for many more shootings in larger amounts than before. It brought the true danger of these mass shootings into the spotlight, causing numerous protests as many of the students spoke out. This year alone has seen 27 shootings associated with schools, and over 250 mass shootings. The heavily debated topic around the issue of school shootings and all shootings remains to be related to regulating firearms and whether it will make a significant enough difference in gun violence.
The issue varies by state
Political Science Chair Ken Moffett said he believes the role of firearms has been further discussed as a response to these shootings, but that states are making more of their own regulations. “A lot of the action on gun control and matters related thereto has largely happened in the states. For example, after the Parkland Shooting down in Florida,
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the state of Florida passed a gun control law — and keep in mind with Florida, that was a red state passing a gun control law,” Moffett said. While debated, Moffett also said he sees that many on both sides of the political spectrum are agreeing on how large the issue of school shootings is becoming, and that the Florida gun control law was a good example of this. He said in states like Illinois, this regulation is more common. “So for example, here in Illinois, you do have FOID where a person has to have a FOID card to even be able to purchase or possess firearms or ammunition if you’re an Illinois resident,” Moffett said. Illinois as a state has only reported 65 school shootings since 1970. As a result of the most recent shootings within the past months, the state of New York took its own action in raising its legal age for owning a firearm to the age of 21, the same age Illinois uses to regulate ownership. This particular law has since marked a challenge from the U.S. Supreme Court on what authority local officials have on firearm regulations that is set to be voted on this month. Moffett said the issue of firearm regulation likely doesn’t have a clear answer to how it can be dealt with. “I think part of the answer with respect to [something like] assault weapons and things like that is defining what exactly an assault weapon is in a way to where you’re not also banning, for example, shotguns or commonly used hunting rifles,” Moffett said. Moffett also said another issue comes with how banning these types of weapons has worked in the past and the early loopholes people and companies used to get past the bans. “The difficulty there is if you define firearms in that way, what manufacturers @alestlelive
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Firearm regulation and armed guards/ law enforcement in schools
Another heavily debated topic is the idea of armed guards or law enforcement in public schools, one that Moffett said states have tried to put into motion. “There have been some moves to have armed security at schools with the idea that armed security will make it less likely that a mass shooter would come there in the first place, but if the mass shooter does come there then the shooting can be stopped in earlier stages,” Moffett said. Moffett also said the idea has shown no evidence of actually being effective as of 2022 due to a lack of proper study. “As far as that goes in terms of looking at that as a public policy [is that] it looks reasonable on the surface, but nobody has empirically tested the question of ‘do armed guards at schools either deter shootings or make shootings less deadly if they happen,’” Moffett said. The idea of arming teachers is another one that has gained traction, but Moffett said the issue is that it’s difficult to get teachers to arm themselves. “Even in states that allow teachers to be armed, very few teachers go through the process to get armed in the first place. You even see that in Texas, which has as high a firearm ownership rate as anywhere [else] in the country,” Moffett said. In many large school districts however, law enforcement is present to some degree in schools to ensure the safety of students. One such school district is the Edwardsville school district, with schools such as Edwardsville High School and Liberty @Online Editor Alestle
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