Mike Rappe said, "The loss of life and health of the Vet's was terrible but I
>wonder how many have been killed or hurt by the drugs and "Free Love"
>culture back here at home. How many lost their lives or minds or were
>disabled from the use of drugs? How many women died or hurt by illegal
>and unsafe abortions? How many children died in those abortions?"
>
I think very few people lost their lives or minds from drugs in the 1960s,
especially as compared with the hundreds of thousands killed by alcohol,
cigarettes and addictive phrmacutical drugs thats drug companies push.
Someone should check statistics on this.
As a woman who had a really awful illegal abortion in Juarez Mexico in the
1960s and hemorraghed after, I really don't like it when you say
"children" died in illegal abortions. I don't think any "children" died in
illegal abortions in the 1960s or any other decade. Unfortunately, my aunt
did die from an illegal abortion before the 1960s. When we did abortion
speakouts in the early 1980s, I told about my illegal abortion in the 1960s
and another woman told about her's in the 1930s, and illegal abortions were
much more brutul in the 1930s. If you want a decade for truly hideous
illegal abortions, especially for poor women, check out the 1930s. The
"Free Love" culture that you criticize created an abortion underground that
helped women get decent illegal abortions in the 1960s and helped women
recover from bad ones. Better question: how did the "Free Love" culture of
the 1960s help broaden women's freedoms. And three cheers for the "free
love" culture of the 1960s.
Julia Stein
jstein@laedu.lalc.k12.ca.us
[2]
>The loss of life and health of the Vet's was terrible
Yes, but 5 million Vietnamese were killed, the overwhelming majority
non-combatants. US casualties pale beside this.
>but I
>wonder how many have been killed or hurt by the drugs and "Free Love"
>culture back here at home.
Drugs are bad -- the US government, of course, was heavily
involved in smuggling heroin back to the US, and the toll of drugs
among GIs was great.
But "free love"? What do you mean by this -- "sex before
marriage", or what? It's a term usually used by conservatives to
slander those with whom they don't agree. I never saw it, frankly. And
how could it have killed people?
>How many lost their lives or minds or were
>disabled from the use of drugs?
Lots, as you know, and they still are. Come to Newark sometime. The
government is entirely responsible.
>How many women died or hurt by illegal
>and unsafe abortions?
A lot -- but what does this have to do with the '60s? Abortions were
illegal from time immemorial til the early 70s.
>How many children died in those abortions?
None, since a fetus is not a "child."
Now, my comment: it would be good, and interesting, to discuss
the questions of drugs, abortion, and "free love" (whatever the author
means by that). But this message does not raise these questions for
discussion in a clear or, to my mind, forthright manner. Why not do
so?
Grover C. Furr
English Department | Phone: (201) 655-7305
Montclair State University | email:
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043 |
WWW: http://www.shss.montclair.edu/english/furr/homepage.html
** NOTE: new email address 9/1/95: **
furrg@alpha.montclair.edu