NOTICE - Escorts and defenders are needed at all women's clinics throughout the country... you know where they are... Just go... the feeling of actually DOING something is terrific.
      Yes, there is a danger.
      More danger if you don't do anything.

      Steven Butler, 32, a well-known anti-freedom-for-women activist has been arrested for assaulting his wife. Cherie Butler told Livermore, California, police her husband kicked her in the back of the head. According to court records, he also threw a metal chair at her that missed but hit their 18-month-old daughter. Butler has been arrested several times for his anti-abortion actions. Cherie told police her husband said he would kill her if she told anyone about the violence.
      Stephen claims he is innocent. "She hit me first!"
      PLEASE SEND CATT'S CLAWS ANY ACCOUNTS OF VIOLENCE REGARDING THE ANTI-FREEDOM-FOR-WOMEEN GUERILLAS IN YOUR AREA -
      It has been long suspected that many anti-freedom-for-women activists who terrorize women's clinics fit the profile of batterers and the battered. We need to show the national pattern.

      Speaking of violence, if you'd like to drop a note to Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue and the man who says that we've passed the threshhold of peace, and that blood must be shed although, he says, he isn't sure whose blood (but we know now) his address if #05426-031, Dorm A-4, Federal Prison Camp, POB 1000, Montgomery, PA 17752. Be nice, now - the feds open everything. Terry also believes that we should use birth control. "If WE have babies, WE have babies," he said ... ignoring the fact that WE don't have babies, women have (and die of too many) babies.
      Haven't you ever wondered how come there are any women on the anti-abortion, no birth-control lines? Why aren't they all home pregnant and bare-foot in the kitchen where they say *we* belong?

FROM THE CHOICE-MAIL NET:

President Clinton's nomination of Ob/Gyn Dr. Henry W. Foster as new Surgeon General has ignited anti-choice forces against the nominee. HUNDREDS of calls have already been placed to protest this nomination since it was revealed that Dr. Foster has, in the past, performed a handful of abortions (latest number cited is a dozen, all of which Dr. Foster explains were related to rape/incest or life of the mother).
      NARAL is calling for all pro-choice organizations to activate their phone banks immediately. Individuals, you too! Phone your Senators and urge them to support Dr. Foster's nomination!
      Also call Senator Nancy Kassebaum, Chair of the Health and Labor Services Committee. Her phone number is 202-224-4774. (I'm sorry, I do not have her fax number.) Or send a letter to her at the U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C. 20510-1602. (Has anyone noticed that the so-called "moderate" social republicans have all hardened their stands against women's freedoms since the November election ??? Isn't THAT strange!)
      If Dr. Foster's nomination is jeopardized by an anti-choice mobilization, it will stand as a national testament to the effective blacklisting of medical professionals who provide a full range of reproductive services.
      Please call and support this nomination!

Tori also writes that in Halifax (information summarized based on story published in the Victoria Times-Colonist):

Four doctors who perform abortions at a hospital in Halifax have received death threats. Two of the threatened physicians have decided to stop performing abortions. Women will instead be referred to a clinic in Halifax.

      It is our pleasure to announce the introduction of a new list:
      BEIJING95-L,
      UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON WOMEN,
      BEIJING, SEPT 95.

      BEIJING95-L is a fully moderated international electronic forum
      FOR WOMEN ONLY dedicated to the discussion United Nations Conference on Women which will convene in September 1995 in Beijing, China. It is hoped that BEIJING95-L will provide a network for women where we can exchange information concerning the upcoming conference.
      For information, input, or if you are having technical difficulties, please contact the list moderator, Jennifer Gagliardi, our good cyberspace buddy - gagliajn@netcom.com. It will be fully moderated.
      To subscribe: <Listserv@Netcom.com - leave subject blank and in the text <subscribe Beijing95-L your first name & last name.

      Victims are fighting back - A man accused of shooting and raping a 15-year-old cross country runner was sentenced to at least 18 years in prison Wednesday after the victim confronted him in court and told him he'd pay.
      Charles S. Vaughan, 21, had pleaded no contest to charges of kidnapping, attempted murder and rape. He was sentenced to four consecutive 10- to 25-year terms and will be eligible for parole in 18 years.
      In my adopted hometown, a woman wrote to the rapists of her sister in the "Letters to the Editor" column that she was going to get him... that he shouldn't sleep because he never knew when she'd be there...
      Vaughn had attacked his victim when she lagged behind while jogging with her school's country tearm about 60 miles north of Columbus, Ohio. After being raped, she was shot five times in the head and back.
      "I beat you, you know that, don't you? You made a very bad mistake," the runner told Vaughan before sentencing. "I deserve to live. I have a right to live - I told you that before you shot me... You're going to pay for what you did."

      Did you read about the Philadelphia man who was so "eager" for a family that he payed an agency $30,000 for a surrogate mother to bear his child - and then beat his five-week-old son to death?
      James Alan Austin, 26, said he beat the boy with his fists and a plastic coat hanger.
      Charges of criminal homicide with bail of $500,000 have been filed against Austin but nothing to date has been done about the Infertility Center of American in Indianapolis, which arrangeed the surrogate agreement.
      Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, questioned the reasoning behind awarding a surrogate child to someone like Austin.
      "I think making surrogates available to 26-year-old fertile men is crazy," Caplan said. "I think what they might need is to be pointed towards the personal ads or a dating service."
      The center was founded by lawyer Noel P. Keane, who has arranged hundreds of surrogate births, including the "Baby M" case in New Jersey. The mother was Phyllis Ann Huddleston, 29, and there is no evidence she was aware of who the father was.

      Minneapolis will pay $1.2 million to settle the sex discrimination suit involving more than 300 women who proved the Public Works Department systematically refused to promote women.

      We wrote about how the all-woman crew of the America(3) yacht did racing but failed to mention the *usual* crap that women have to go through when challenging - on a level playing field - men's proclaimed superiority.
      At a recent party one of the women poured a drink over a rival captain's head when he made remarks about the women's sexuality.
      One of the women's greatest fears, however, is being honed in training races where the men take a special glee in running close to the women's yacht in a chicken game to scare them. The women are known to be holding their course so the men are actually the ones chickening out (laughing about the close calls) but the women worry about a bad accident during the races themselves when testosterone might overcome good sense.
      The magazine Outside had a feature article on the America(3) team in its January issue. (Ironically, or maybe not so, the all-woman America(3) team lost the championship because the ONLY male on the crew goofed... the media hardly mentioned it.)

      I am not a sitcom watcher - other than Murphy and Ladies of the House, etc., but Dave's World on Monday night may bring me around. Dave, while hitting all the bases of men's insecurities about their sexual abilities in a humorous but honest way, got a vasectomy. The scene of Dave "in the stirrups" was a classic.

      Patricia Johnson, an award winning brokerage house branch manager, has appealed a decision that suspends her from managerial jobs for six months because an underling bilked $114,500 from customers. However, to date nothing has been done to Edward Cerullo who as manager profited by a nice sum of $20 MILLION (and is keeping it) when one of his underlings, Joseph Jett declared false sales of $350 million... Elaine Ullian, 46, is the new president and CEO of the prestigious Boston University Medical Center Hospital. She had gained a national reputation for breast-cancer-treatment program at Faulkner Hospital... Discounting claims of reverse discrimination and claiming it's just a correction of years of injustice, Albany, N.Y. residents have approved a revised county charter that uses she instead of he as the gender-neutral references. For example, the job description of the county executive now reads: "Her terms of office..."

      According to the U.N., women are just 28% of the work fource, but official figures in Africa, for example, tally only formal, salaried work - although women farmers produce between 60% and 80% of the continent's food and dominate the street markets.
      Studies by the World Bank have shown that one year of schooling lowers a woman's fertility rate by 5-10%. Women educated for seven years average five or fewer children instead of seven or more. A woman with a few years of schooling will educate her daughters as well as her sons, and, as a former World Bank official said, "when the average mother has nearly 40 grandchildren, as in Pakistan, this is no small thing."

      Apparently, speaker Newty has an identical twin from whom he was separated at birth--
      The following is from a Jerusalem wire report:
      "A colonel who told high school seniors that historically men have been warriors and women have been prostitutes was reprimanded. The furor over comments by the armored corps officer, Gershon Hacohen, was the latest chapter in Israel's lively debate over the role of female soldiers."
      (submitted by Renee Lou)