SURROGATE MOTHERS
Pushing For A Ban
A new coalition including surrogate mothers, feminists, and critics of biotechnology will push for a federal law banning contracts that require surrogate mothers to give up their babies. The National Coalition Against Surrogacy also will provide free legal advice to surrogate mothers.
The organization will receive initial funding from the Foundation on Economic Trends, headed by Jeremy Rifkin. He called surrogacy arrangements a “modified form of slavery” that violates contract law and the principles of the U.S. Constitution.
At a Washington news conference, Rifkin was joined by three surrogate mothers, including Mary Beth Whitehead, who lost custody of her daughter in the Baby M trial. “Don’t let this happen anymore; it’s not right,” Whitehead said. “I feel in my heart the only crime we [surrogate mothers] committed was loving our babies. That’s it. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
Feminist author Gena Corea described the rise of a “surrogacy industry,” stressing concerns that surrogacy could be coupled with new reproductive techniques to allow couples to “order” babies with preselected characteristics.
ABORTION
A First-Time Decline
Federal health officials reported a decrease in the number of abortions for the first time since record keeping began in 1969.
A report released by the Federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says 1,268,987 abortions were performed in 1983, the latest year for which statistics are available. That figure was down 2.7 percent from the number of abortions reported in 1982. However, the health agency noted that the number of reported abortions was probably lower than the number actually performed.
The CDC report said the abortion rate declined in 1983 to 23 for every 1,000 women 15 to 44 years old, from a 1980 peak of 25 per 1,000 women. The percentage of abortions obtained by teenagers also declined—from 29 percent of the total in 1980 to 27 percent in 1983.
EDUCATION
Failing The Teacher Test
A new U.S. Department of Education report indicates that 17 to 28 percent of prospective public school teachers fail basic competency tests, despite “extremely low” requirements to pass the tests.
“Given that the tests are not difficult and that the passing scores appear to be relatively low, one would expect virtually everyone to pass teacher certification examinations,” the report states. “Yet this is not the case.”
All but two states, Alaska and Iowa, require applicants to achieve minimum test scores, either when they apply for admission to a college of education, or before they are awarded a license to teach.
“The common practice of establishing extremely low passing scores further diminishes the ability of many teacher-testing programs to support meaningful standards,” said Lawrence Rudner, a former federal analyst who directed the study.
In 22 of the states that require minimum test scores before certifying teachers, 17 percent of the applicants failed the test. In the 27 states with admissions testing programs for prospective education majors, an average of 28 percent failed.
UNITED METHODISTS
Lesbian On Suspension
A church court in New Hampshire suspended United Methodist minister Rose Mary Denman after determining that she violated a rule that bans practicing homosexuals from the clergy.
Denman was suspended from pastoral duties until next June, when clergy in the church’s New Hampshire Annual Conference will vote on her ministerial status. The sentence was the most lenient possible. Denman could have been defrocked and even expelled from the United Methodist Church.
A divorced mother, Denman requested the church trial after obtaining a leave of absence from two parishes in New Hampshire and notifying her bishop that she was a lesbian. She said she wanted to stand trial in order to challenge the 1984 church rule barring practicing homosexuals from the pastorate.
However, Bishop Neil Irons, who presided at the trial, said the issue at stake was whether Denman had violated church law, which says clergy must practice “fidelity in marriage and celibacy in singleness.” He said the trial was not a forum for debating the merits of the ban on homosexual clergy.
Denman lives in Portland, Maine, with Winnie Weir, the ex-wife of a pastor. Denman has said she will attempt to transfer her ministerial credentials to the Unitarian Universalist Association, which accepts homosexual clergy.
PEOPLE AND EVENTS
Briefly Noted
Dropped : From the list of institutions approved for the education of United Methodist clergy, the Oral Roberts University School of Theology. The school was one of 11 non-Methodist seminaries dropped by the United Methodist University Senate, which declined to give reasons for its action. Criteria used in evaluating theological schools include freedom of academic inquiry, compatibility with the denomination’s social principles, racial and sexual inclusiveness of faculty and student body, and academic quality.
Sought : By the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, a new name. The church’s biennial convention asked a committee to recommend a name that will reflect the spread of the denomination’s membership far beyond the boundaries of one state. The 114,000-member church has congregations in all 50 states and three Canadian provinces, as well as overseas mission work on all continents except Australia.
