!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^ ! ! Catt's Claws ... a feminist newsletter #35 ... April 25,1995 ! !^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^!^ ! Anybody notice that the Republicans who opposed until the death the health care reforms of President Clinton are now suggesting health care reform? Particularly they want to march senior citizens into H.M.O. because the Republicans say medicare is just too expensive. Ah, the difference in the moral outlook in nations. A 15-year- old girl in Wales was brutally raped and murdered and the police are ASKING for blood samples from the men of the area. Most are cooperating willingly. "It's the right thing to do," one man said. Four years ago the South Wales police screened 5,000 men-volunteers but failed to locate the rapist-murderer of a 27-year-old woman. If we take fingerprints - why not DNA samples which are THE definitive identifications ????? Why is fingerprinting legal and DNA testing not? ....................... * ........................ June E. O'Neill, 60, is the new director of the Congressional Budget Office, the number crunchers for Congress. She replaced a Democrat when Newt-Dole came into power. She and her husband are well-known conservative economist who believe the wage-differential between whites and blacks is caused by education, not discrimination. She also believes the less federal government the better. ....................... * ........................ On the masthead of my New York Times it reads "printed in Texas." ....................... * ........................ The first woman in France's history to be honored for her own merit," said France's president Francois Mitterrand who ordered Marie Curie's ashes and those of her husband to be moved to France's renowned Pantheon in Paris. It houses the remains of such FrenchMEN as Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, and Zola. The ceremony at the majestic domed monument, draped with a huge French flag, was a symbolic triumph for French women's rights activists and a dramatic farewell gesture by President Francois Mitterrand. Ailing with cancer as he completes the final weeks of his 14-year presidency, Mitterrand fulfilled a 1993 request from feminists that a woman be enshrined in the Pantheon. On Mitterrand's order, the ashes of Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre Curie, were transferred from a small-town cemetery and carried in wood coffins into the Pantheon. The couple shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903, and she alone won the chemistry Nobel in 1911. Despite her greatness, Marie Curie suffered from the male chauvinism prevalent during her heyday -- she was denied membership in the Academy of Sciences, which was then all-male. Her husband was invited to join which he refused to do without his wife. Mitterrand said he sought to honor the Curies as two of the greatest scientists of modern times, and also to ``recognize the place that women hold in our society.'' Even after she won the TWO Nobel prizes, her laboratory was poorly equipped because the university wouldn't support a woman - and when she wanted to do more research, AMERICAN women bought her a gram of radium which she could not afford to buy! ....................... * ........................ IN%"coombs@email.unc.edu" "Frances Coombs" forwards a message to Catt's Claws from Paul Jones: More than a few folks have expressed concern about the recently revealed views of Rep. Aldridge regarding rape after hearing him speak on NPR last evening and this morning. Basically: "in real rape, a woman cannot be impregnated; it's biologically impossible" or close to that. Folks...wanted to know how to contact the Greenville dentist to give him their own opinions... (Thanks to Nash Foster for the research) Email: Henry_Aldridge@NCGA.Legislature.State.NC.US Dr. Aldridge, Marvin W., wife Susu, occupation Periodontist, telephone 919-756-2807, 108 Oakmont Dr. Greenville, NC 27858 919-756-1456 Fax: 919-355-5020 HOUSE OFFICE: Room 533 Phone #: 733-5958 ALDRIDGE CC--> If you contact him (and you'd better or you're bounced as a human being), PLEASE BE POLITE. Let's not lower ourselves to his level, but make sure he understands that he is absolutely WRONG. ....................... * ........................ One of the saddest tales of the eternal mother-daughter rivalries that are foisted on women is what is happening in Sri Lanka. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga is now battling with her mother Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike - yes, mother and daughter head Sri Lank since the elections last August. Much of the difficulty seems to be "mother knows best and she'll always be a little girl to me," and "get out of my way, Ma, you're a has-been." Sound familiar in your home? And who do you think is encouraging the in-fighting? ....................... * ........................ "I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve, and daughters are cherished as much as sons." -- U.S.Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg when she was nominated for the high court June, 1993. ....................... * ........................ "Living daily under conditions stemming from active lesbianism practice in the home may impose a burden upon a child by reason of the 'social condemnation' attached to such an arrangement, which will inevitably afflict the child's relationships with its peers and with the community," wrote Virginia State Supreme Court Justice A.Christian Compton in a 4-3 decision that rejected a lesbian mother's plea for her son's custody. The minority opinion written by Justice Barbara Milano Keenan (and joined by the other female justice Elizabeth B. Lacy and Justice Henry H. Whiting, said in part, "There is no evidence in this record showing that the mother's homosexual conduct is harmful to the child." The boy, 3, is not allowed to see his mother's partner. Custody has been given to the mother's mother, an almost unprecedented move. A recent decision in New York said lesbians cannot adopt their partner's child because they are not legally married. ....................... * ........................ "I struck out on three grounds -I was Jewish, a woman and a mother. The first raised one eyebrow; the second, two; the third made me indubitably inadmissible." --U.S. Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg in speaking about her prospects following her graduation from Columbia Law School in 1959. ....................... * ........................ The scores of 18,719 boys and girls from 1,000 schools showed that giving girls more hands-on work would close the gender gap in physical science. The study was headed by University of Michigan researcher Valerie Lee along with David Burkam. "The gender disparity is greatest among the most able students, the pool from which tomorrow's working scientists will emerge," said Lee, an education professor. The study concluded that girls begin their science education at a disadvantage, not because of a lack of interest, but because of a lack of exposure to sciences. ....................... * ........................ From: COURRY Operation Rescue was denied the use of churches for rallies and meetings places in Orange County, CA by the simple expedient of picketing the churches OR used on Sunday morning. After a while no church in Orange County would let them use their facilities. It never took more than one picket to convince church authorities that OR was more trouble than they were worth. CC--> PASS THE WORD - They aren't the only ones who can picket. As President Clinton said, it is time for decent people to stand up for their rights and say "what you are doing is wrong, it is evil!" ....................... * ........................ From: Marie Lamb : Terry recently completed a five-month sentence for contempt of court for his role in a July 1992 demonstration during the Democratic National Convention in New York City in which an anti-abortion opponent showed then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton an aborted fetus. NO NO NO!! Here is another example of how the press distorts. (Liberal media, my Aunt Fanny!!) The fetus that Terry had was STILLBORN. Aborted fetuses are much smaller. All of the gross pictures that OR uses are of STILLBORN fetuses!! ARRRRRGGHHHH! CC--> as a clinic defender who has had dozens of those bloody pictures shoved into my face (Oh, how they love to enlarge those photos and wave them around while they are salivating with excitement), I can testify that the pictures are indeed of fully developed babies, not incomplete fetuses. Many of the photos are poorly arranged montages that are so obviously false, but since it's usually men waving them around, the guys don't know how ridiculous some of them are. Nobody aborts a nine-month baby with long fingernails ... ....................... * ........................ While so many of our top women's groups are fiddling while our rights are burned up in the Republican Congress, one of our finest groups, the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (a separately run organization from NOW) is doing something ... Here is the beginning of a message that you must read and act on: FROM THE COMMITTEE OF ONE HUNDRED of the NOW LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND 99 HUDSON STREET 12TH FL. NEW YORK, NEW YORK, 10013, 212-343-4346 April 19, 1995 Dear Friend: We are a group of women concerned about the impending legislation on welfare. We think that it is urgent that women speak out as women against punitive welfare legislation. We write to you because you are a woman of prominence who can provide leadership. We hope that you will take time out of your busy schedule to consider what this piece of social legislation will mean for millions of women and what you might do to raise your voice against this looming disaster. We have reached the end of the first furious 100 days of the current session of Congress. The Contract with America undoes progressive social legislation in force since the New Deal. A centerpiece of the Contract is the PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY ACT. On March 24th, a shameful day, the legislation passed the House. But this bill is not yet law, and we have the possibility of blocking the passage of a similar bill in the Senate..... CC--> If you would like a complete of the LDEF proposal, please email me for it or email Ekittay@ccmail.sunysb.edu or US003667@interramp.com. ....................... * ........................ Women's rights are young and tender and we must protect them from the plagues of holy water and newts. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- "... when conditions are evil, your duty...is to see that those conditions are changed. If your laws forbid you, you must change your laws. If your church forbids you, you must change your church. And if your God forbids you, you must change your God. -- Clemence Dane (1861-1965).