Word: volstead
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...early stages of pregnancy should be a medical, not a criminal matter; it was best left to the judgment of the woman and her physician. Given the violence of warring moralities in the abortion debate, the law was unreasonably strained. The statutes forbidding abortion were a kind of Volstead Act, so widely (and often dangerously) violated as to be worse than useless. The court was therefore wise to send the question back to the privacy of individual consciences. The many who believe abortion morally wrong should honor their convictions. But the dilemma is too difficult to permit antiabortionists to impose...
Versailles; the Volstead Act, which established Prohibition in 1919; Franklin D. Roosevelt's first inaugural address, heralding the New Deal in 1933; the Japanese surrender instrument of 1945; the Marshall Plan...
Kennedy's quixotic bill is an effort to legislate virtue - like the Volstead Act. The truth bill might lower the general level of mendacity in Washington, though the cautionary example of Watergate and the Roundhead vigilance around the capital these days should be warning enough. But if the law were enacted, could a President bluff another power by announcing a course of action he had no intention of taking...
...Just as millions of Americans, undeterred by the Volstead Act, drank liquor illegally before Prohibition was repealed, so millions are now smoking marijuana. Scientists estimate that some 24 million have tried the drug. Three million are believed to use it from one to four times a month, another 5,000,000 smoke it at least once a week, and 500,000 daily or even more often. Within five years, believes Psychologist William McGlothlin of the University of California at Los Angeles, there may be 6,000,000 to 12 million weekly users and from 800,000 to 2.5 million daily...
...announced it is quitting the Motion Picture Association of America, under whose aegis the rating board operates. MGM President James Aubrey describes the code as "confusing and impractical." New York Theater Owner Walter Reade calls it "our Volstead Act" and wishes it the same end. There are even defectors from the censors' ranks. Stephen Farber, 27, a film critic who quit the board after a stormy six months, says, "Pubic hair and breasts, that's what they're worried about...