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November 4

11-04 TABLE of CONTENTS: Fathers' Ages and Birth Defects DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTE by Christable Pankhurst. Men's Age Has Impact on Fetal Health       Babies sired by men over age 35 have TWICE the normal rate of birth defects.       This salient point and others regarding the fragility of male sperm first appeared in an April 1991 Health magazine article that was based on studies at the University of North Carolina -- and strangely, the media, many doctors, and the gynophobics haven't publicized it enough for it to be well known to women who are often "blamed" for birth defects of their children.       Because of recent studies, scientists are challenging the double standards that lead women to overhaul their lives before a pregnancy, avoiding stress, cigarettes, and champagne - while men are left confident that their lifestyle has little bearings on their fertility or their future child's health.       "Growing evidence suggests that sperm is both more fragile and potentially more dangerous than previously thought," the scientific paper said after a review of 15,000 newborns. The University of North Carolina scientists concluded that a father's drinking and smoking habits, even his age, can increase his child's risk of birth defects.       David A. Savitz, Ph.D., in the North Carolina review said "Because of the constant turnover of sperm, mutations caused by the environment can arise more frequently in men than in women." Sperm is created daily in an exposed place in a man while a woman is born with all the ovum she will have in a lifetime (with their having been developed in a doubly safe environment, inside themselves and inside their mothers). | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 11-04 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 11-04-1803, Sarah Hall Boardman Judson worked side-by-side in the field with her first missionary husband, carried on his work after he died, and continued working after her marriage to well-known missionary Adoniram Judson. She translated the New Testament and her husband's Life of Christ into the Peguan language and translated and developed a Burmese hymnal. She died without regaining her health after the birth of her 11th child, eight of them with Judson in 11 years. B. 11-04-1881, Gena Branscombe, Canadian-born American composer, teacher, choral and orchestral conductor, and pianist. Prize winner for her choral drama Pilgrims of Destiny, 1928. B. 11-04-1904, Dorothy Eugenia Miner, museum curator and librarian, art historian, Keeper of Manuscripts at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, which encompassed more than 20,000 objects and gained an international reputation for organizing exhibitions. Her mother had been a nun. B. 11-04-1912, Pauline Trigere, fashion designer who produced the first reversible coat. B. 11-04-1930, Kate Reid, Canadian actress. Her widowed mother raised her alone. Event 11-04-1943, The airfield C.O. at Lake Charles promises to make a report where it counts. "No pilot, man or woman, should be ordered to fly junk like those BT-9's." WASPs were ordered to fly retired BT-9's from Kelly field where they were stored (some were stored nose down) and belched black smoke and were red-lined from duty. The WASPs were ordered to fly them to Biloxi to a aircraft mechanics school where they would be torn down by the students       . No one could figure out why the wrecks - several of which crashed in flight - weren't shipped on flatcars.       Byrd Granger, the herstorian of the WASPS and the flight leader for the transporting of the BT-9s wrote: "The answer is simple enough: WASPs are expendable." Event 11-04-1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the House of Representatives. Event 11-04-1986, San Francisco, California, voters approve pay equity for city female/male workers. Event 11-04-1992, the Ecclesiastical Court of the Presbyterian Church (USA) prevented a Rochester, New York, church from hiring an openly lesbian, sexually active minister, the Rev. Jane Adams, as its co-pastor. The Rev. Adams had been ordained in 1973 before the Presbyterian General Assembly voted to halt ordination of gays and lesbians. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE | | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR PANKHURST, CHRISTABLE:       "We are here to claim our rights as women, not only to be free, but to fight for freedom. It is our privilege, as well as our pride and our joy, to take some part in this militant movement (suffrage), which as we believe, means the regeneration of all humanity. Nothing but contempt is due to those people who ask us to submit to unmerited oppression. We shall not do it."             -- Christable Pankhurst, leader of the militant wing of the Women's Suffrage Movement in England | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE | | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |