Letters to the Editor

A new religious test

Edd Doerr, in lamenting the Supreme Court’s recent decision banning partial-birth abortion (“Church, state and JFK,” Letters, Saturday), asserted that the justices who happen to be Catholic elevated their church’s teaching over sound legal reasoning and women’s “rights.” (Rosie O’Donnell made the same point, by the way, which speaks to the merits of the argument).

In any event, this accusation is interesting. Mr. Doerr seems to be suggesting that any court decision should first be compared with the religious background of the judge(s) and, if found to be compatible with any aspect thereof, immediately reversed, lest “religion” be perceived as being of any moment in the world of legal reasoning. And we can’t have that.

Had Mr. Doerr’s preference been in place during the last 50 years (heck, how about the last 200?) a slew of social changes would not have occurred: the modern civil-rights movement was pushed into the national conscience by Martin Luther King, a Christian minister, and courts have been in lockstep ever since the Voting Rights Act that minorities are equal to anyone else. But since virtually every mainline religious body recognizes the concept of equality before God, I guess we should reverse that whole idea and go back to “whites only” and “separate but equal.” At least that way it couldn’t be said that anyone’s church was dictating our social policy.

Mr. Doerr means well, I’m sure. But a society that would promote civil rights cannot separate itself from its religious underpinnings and remain civil for very long.

JACK WEBB

Springfield

Trade deficit benefits

Economic growth requires market-driven investment, and investment requires savings. So the editorial “The GDP” (Editorial, Saturday) was right to argue that a fall in Americans’ savings rate threatens to reduce the U.S. economy’s growth rate.

But why do you often lament the U.S. trade deficit? The larger is this deficit, the greater are the amounts that foreigners invest in America. And the more that foreigners invest in America, the higher is the U.S. economy’s growth rate. Research and development in the United States funded with dollars from South Korea is just as productive as the same R&D; would be were it funded with dollars from South Carolina.

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