<^ <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> ........Catt's Claws # 113 ... July 1, 1996......... ........ A Feminist Newsletter by Irene Stuber......... <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> The betrayal of American women by doctors, medical practitioners of all kinds, the Food and Drug Administration, and our own feminist movement's leaders was revealed in all its glory last Friday when the FDA declared high doses of ordinary birth control pills taken soon after sex are an effective prevention of pregnancy 75% of the time. It has been known and used in Britain since 1984 - 15 years!!! - and more than 3.5 million doses of just one brand has been prescribed WITH NO SERIOUS SIDE EFFECTS. Catt's Claws is horrified that longtime feminist leaders have been wasting American women's time and MONEY by centering our attention on the RU486 battle - and using the RU486 smokescreen to raise money for their jaunts...all for naught. Don't anyone try to tell me that they didn't know about this COMMON use of birth control pills in England and six other nations FOR 15 YEARS !!! I am ill at the betrayal. An article by the AP/ITN on Saturday, June 29, 1996 opens: "In a move hailed as unveiling the best-kept secret of women's health care, government scientists on Friday declared high doses of ordinary birth control pills taken soon after sex a good way to prevent pregnancy." MY GAWD, the *government* is revealing this to U.S. women, NOT the leaders of the *feminist movement*? The article goes on to say that the FDA is debating how to spread the information about the pill. Hopefully, every woman's list on Internet will have it on in the next few days and every woman's magazine will have the story prominently placed in its next issue. Certainly the tabloid press should also do its duty. The absolute betrayal of American women is horrific. Add onto this betrayal the actions of the drug companies. Although the drug manufacturers package and sell the pills in emergency packages in other countries they will not do it here because of religious right opposition. To hell with women's freedoms and to hell with OUR religious freedom. Only the reactionary religious haters of women are allowed religious freedom. A pox on thy house. PEMACHO* thee. None of the birth control manufacturers have asked the FDA permission to market the pills in the U.S. as "morning after" pills - ALTHOUGH U.S. WOMEN PAY THE HIGHEST PRICE FOR DRUGS IN THE WORLD!!! We pay the most but get the least. In at least six other countries, women who are raped, or whose birth control fails, etc., are *routinely* prescribed high doses of birth control pills to prevent pregnancy. But not in the land of the free and the home of the bigots. More than a million unplanned pregnancies could be prevented each year in the U.S. according to some experts. Here is the dosage that prevents pregnancy 75% of the time; please spread this to EVERY email list you are on, make sure it appears in every women's organization newsletter, paste it on the walls of johns in every public place you go - GET THE WORD OUT - Take 2 Wyeth's Ovral or 4 tablet of Wyeth's Nordette, Lo/Ovral or Triphasil or Berlex Laboratories Levlen or Tri-Levlen and then take the same, second dosage exactly 12 hours later. Nausea occurs in some cases. Vomiting, which is RARE, will prevent it from working. A few women taking the pills in England suffered ill effects but NONE of those side effects were caused by the pills, according to British health experts. Do you feel betrayed? If the morning after dosage fails, then go to your friendly family physician and ask for the two pill mixture of Methotrexate and Misoprostol. Methotrexate is FDA-approved for use against cancer; Misoprostol is FDA approved to treat ulcers. Because both are FDA-approved, they can be prescribed by physicians today and together, they produce abortions at a better rate than the RU-486 pill. I'm so angry I have trouble breathing. DAMN them. I think of the Boston massacre at the women's clinics. I think of the bombings, the shootings, the murders of doctors and clinic defenders - the waste. J'accuse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Use of the birth control pill method of abortion is NOT to replace condoms because even before pregnancy, AIDS is the big danger in man\ woman sex. All forms of birth control should use sound, educated barriers against AIDS and other forms of sexually transmitted diseases. Remember that the fastest growing segment of the HIV/AIDS population are married women infected by their husbands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I hope to GAWD that some brave soul stands up at the NOW conference in Las Vegas next month and asks why the American women weren't informed of the simple birth control pill abortion by their feminist leaders? If the chair says she didn't know, then I would hope someone would stand and say, "HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW!" Or were they afraid to commit themselves and maybe break a law as Catt's Claws did for months by posting abortion information? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Afghani men show their love for their sons by kissing their penises. This practice may also be common in many other uslim countries. But in the U.S.? Well, charges of sexual abuse were thrown out of court in Maine against Mohammad Kargar because the kissing of his son's penis it is considered a cultural way of expressing the father's great love of his son's sex. Kargar was arrested after two children saw him kissing his son's penis. A photograph in the family album showed kissings of the infant's penis. His wife said she took the picture for her mother-in-law. This puts a different light on the adoration of the magi pictures where the little pee-pee is always showing ... and are the magi kneeling???? (BTW - There is the ancient idea that the female genital brings good luck and is probably where the "lucky horseshoe" symbolism is derived from. In India, touching the genitals of a female statue supposedly gives good luck.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Many months ago we ran a special Catt's Claws warning about the date rape drug Rohypnol. We were criticized for being hysterical. The Drug Enforcement Administration is now saying the drug should be put in the same category as cocaine and heroin. And the company is beginning to put it out in a different form that won't dissolve as easily in drinks. It's THAT dangerous. Rohypnol, banned in the United States since March 1996, is 10 times more powerful than Valium. Legal in 64 countries, few if any of them report the abuse that has occurred in the U.S. by our dear, dear All-American boyz. Roofies, as the boyz affectionately call them, have no taste or odor and easily dissolves in a drink. They sell illegally (frat house pushers?) for $1 to $5 per pill. The DEA documented more than 2,400 federal, state and local criminal investigations involving Rohypnol. Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Florida have already classified Roofies as a schedule 1 drug. In "roofie rape," victims who are slipped the drug become dizzy and disoriented and have trouble moving their arms and legs. Ultimately, they pass out and have little or no memory of what happened. For $1-$5 the entire frat house gets to rape a helpless victim. Macho men. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Without asking questions, it seems like the Gay and Lesbian Task Force leadership has jumped the gun and accused the Justice Department of not taking into consideration the affectional orientation of the murder victims Julianne Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minn., and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine. They were found June 1 in a Shenandoah National Park campsite with their throats slashed. Attorney General Janet Reno contradicted the GLTF. "From the outset, investigators have been exhaustively ... pursuing all motives, including the possibility that the crime was motivated by the sexual orientation of the victims." For GAWD sake, Reno and the Clinton administration are the best friends gays and lesbians have ever had in Washington. Be reasonable. Let's not shout wolf. Wouldn't a quiet phone call inquiring about the situation have handled things without trying to grab headlines over the bodies of two young women? Stephen Roy Carr is serving life in prison for killing one lesbian camper and wounding another in the Appalachians eight years ago because they were lesbians. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Seeking to keep pace with Pentagon spending on breast cancer studies, a key Senate panel voted Thursday to steer $100 million into prostate cancer research as part of the 1997 defense budget. Prostrate cancer seldom kills and seldom strikes any men under 60. And what the hell is the PENTAGON doing studying breast cancer? Oh, I forgot, they studied breast cancer for umpteen months on men ... Strange isn't it that the Republicans in Congress want to spend that huge amount of money on prostate cancer when there are already two very cheap and easy tests to detect the malady. All women have to detect breast cancer is the dangerous and painful Xrays, not the simple blood test via a finger prick (no pun intended) the men have for prostate cancer. Nobody is saying prostrate cancer isn't a problem but to emphasize it on the basis of national security, as part of our defense budget is like paying for the face lifts of generals and admirals out of the secret slush funds. Yes, Virginia, that's one of the reasons Panama was so important to us. That's where a lot of the plastic surgery was done... and where the brass boyz went to get their brass balls shined. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yep, Bob Dole is going to balance the U.S. budget when he can't even run his primary campaign in the black. He has already exceeded the legal limit on the amount of money he is allowed to spend in the primary and in May borrowed $1.2 million from the general campaign. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re the OJ fundraiser against violence at his Brentwood estate (which was attended by at LEAST one juror), Larry Elder, African American conservative lawyer/radio talk show host in L.A. said, "This is akin to Mark Fuhrman or David Duke holding a fundraiser for the United Negro College Fund." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Dr. Armando E. Giuliano in a recent study is claiming that lumpectomies in women under 35 is less effective than in older women and received national coverage. Well, Dr.Melody A. Cobleigh, director of the Comprehensive Breast Center at Rush Cancer Institute, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, in Chicago says that isn't so. She said her experience is that women under 35 who undergo lumpectomies rarely require subsequent mastectomies. "I don't know what's going on there. I don't know if those surgeries (in the study) were just inadequate surgeries or what." What's going on? You're too polite Dr. Cobleigh. For years instead of trying to figure out alternate methods or spending much money for research into the cause of breast cancer, doctors would whack off women's breasts without a second thought and with obvious contempt leave behind ugly, demeaning scars. Seems that a lot of men out there hate women having breasts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chinese police raided an ice cream factory in Beijing and found 18,000 plastic ice cream sticks in the shapes of naked women ... Three Ontario women have asked the province's Labor Relations Board to recognize sexual harassment as a health and safety hazard. The three women say they suffered threats of dismissal and unfair performance appraisals and verbally abused on the job. The women suffered physical ills because of the tension. Usually the Human Rights Commission handles sex harassment cases but women's groups say only three per cent of complaints get to trial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Comfort showed his buddy John Oliphant a shotgun and told him that he was going to drive to Andrews Air Force Base to kill his estranged wife. Oliphant immediately called security at base to say that Navy Petty Officer Melissa Comfort was in danger. Although security guards reached Melissa Comfort before her husband, they botched things up and one security officers was shot. John Comfort took his wife hostage and then shot her and himself. He did not harm his children. Oliphant said his friend was in a lot of pain because he lost custody of his children. HE was in pain? So he should kill? There is so much of this kind of thing going on. It's a national epidemic and no one is doing or saying enough about it. At least 1,500 women are killed every year - four each day - by their nearest and dearest ... Why aren't we studying why men are so dangerous when they don't get their spoiled brat ways? IF 1,500 men were killed each year by their wives and girlfriends you don't think there'd be all sorts of study commissions and probably a constitutional amendment to burn the witches alive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The outgoing woman president of Iceland, the popular Vigdis Finnbogadottir, took the voters to task for shunning women candidates. One woman candidate had withdrawn and the other finished way back. All's right with the world again. A man now serves as Iceland's PM. "For 16 years I have worked to further the cause of women in Iceland and the argument that it is now time to have a male president weighs heavily on me," Finnbogadottir said in an interview in Vera, an Icelandic women's magazine. "Some say this is my fault because I have done such a good job that no woman can take my place, but I believe rather that it is an attempt to turn the clock back," she said. "It is amazing that someone can come up with such a ridiculous thought that a woman cannot replace a woman." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One in eight women in our country will develop breast cancer during her lifetime, compared to one in 20 a generation ago. And 46,000 American women will die of breast cancer this year. Time for your monthly breast exam - remember, the breast you examine is the one you want to keep. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To receive Catt's Claws by email, write and in the body of the note No name,com and in the body of the note >> Send your ideas, comments, and news to istuber@cswnet.com for inclusion in the Catt's Claws feminist newsletter which will be emailed up to three times a week. This is NOT an interactive discussion net but an exchange of information. Catt's Claws is NOT sponsored by any organization. We are accepting *limited* donations (only what can be spared) to help offset the online costs of posting Catt's Claws. Copyright 1996, Irene Stuber. PO Box 6185, Hot Springs, AR 71902.<<<<