!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.! ! ! ! Catt's Claws ... A Feminist Newsletter #56 ... August 3, 1995 ! ! ! !.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.!.! Women made up 53 percent of the first-year classes at the Yale School of Medicine, at Johns Hopkins and at Harvard marking the first time more women than men have enrolled as first-year students ... and needless to say, it seems to be upsetting some. Yeah, the guys moaning and refusing to recognize that women make up about 53% of the population in this country and the new enrollment rate reflects actual population not prejudice. We're sure they have different explanations and there will be attempts to cut ratios back to the standard of the past ten years or so: 42%. Although Hopkins has been admitting women since 1893, Yale since 1916, and Harvard since 1945, all the schools had a quota system (before affirmative action) that limited women enrollment to only a handful (often only one or two) until pressures forced fairer judgment of applicants by their necks up and not waist down. ....................... * ........................ That "unusual" family of sisters contributing eggs and bearing their brother's children through artificial insemination (we wrote about it several times down through the years) has now hit the TV $en$ational circuit. These people are parading around telling their story to everyone who'll listen. Talk about a kid born with a lot of baggage .... But hardly as much as a young girl in New Orleans who was born from the frozen sperm of her dead father ... and a court has decided the child, now four and born ten days short of the first anniversary of her father's death from cancer, is entitled to her dead father's social security benefits of about $700 a month as well as back payments. (Death benefits???) Legal authorities involved in the case state that no state recognizes a child conceived after the father's death as legitimate although there is a federal lawsuit asking to have the child named her father's legal heir in Louisiana. Now the mother is saying that the child is asking for a brother or sister ... The mother is a kindergarten teacher and therefore out from under the blanket condemnation that might occur if she were on welfare ... can't you just imagine the furor that would erupt if a black women on welfare started having the children of black men after their death and asking for the higher revenues of social security rather than welfare? ....................... * ........................ From: IN%"jgrossho@mhc.mtholyoke.edu" in South Hadley, MA: "Although I have little faith in change through political parties or government, I am sure we need to do something to stop the brutal gang of thieves who have taken over the Republican party. Here in the pioneer valley we are organizing a rally and demo and speakout at the Democratic Party's State issues convention. Our goal is to keep up the pressure on them to move left ... I would urge all of you out there in internet land to try something of the same in your local Democratic state conventions and bombard them with evidence that we are here, we will not go away and we think you damn well better pay attention to us." CC-->> May we add that we must follow up our threats with mass registration of voters and a LOT of letters to the editors against the pillagers of human decency - and letters to our congressional delegations about our intentions. A few letters to our president encouraging him to hang tough is also a good idea. ....................... * ........................ From a recent fundraising letter from the ACLU: "... newly empowered extremist groups in nearly every state are fanning the flames of intolerance and bigotry, igniting fierce legal battles and triggering explosive social conflicts. "Groups like Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition and his American Center for Law and Justice now feel like they have permission to set fire to the Bill of Rights in courtrooms from coast to coast. "In fact, a whole new industry has sprung up solely to advocate and advance right-wing causes in courtrooms and in the public arena. There's the National Legal Foundation, the American Family Association Law Center, the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom, the Rutherford Institute, the American Spiritual Liberties Union, the Christian Legal Society, the U.S. Justice Foundation, and the Christian Educators' association -- just to name a few! "... Just look at what they've done so far: ** Legislatures in Virginia, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi have already enacted laws that mandate prayer in public schools. ** Similar laws requiring some form of prayer in public schools are being debated right now in Oklahoma, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Louisiana, South Carolina, Texas, and the District of Columbia. ** In California, one school board has been trying to require the teaching of creationism while dozens of others are working to change curricula and textbooks to reflect a sectarian religious viewpoint. ** Books explaining homosexuality were burned in Kansas and a library aide was fired in Montana for helping students with an approved project because parents believed the books she loaned them "reflected feminism and satanism." ** ... AND ONE SCHOOL BOARD IN VIRGINIA JUST VOTED TO USE THE BIBLE FOR THE STUDY OF GRAMMAR, HISTORY AND LITERATURE. ....................... * ........................ Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., reacted angrily to the defeat of a ridiculous plan to change the U.S. Sate department that couldn't even get the support of his own party by saying that "if the administration wants to play hard ball," he'll make sure that no ambassador nominations or treaties get through his committee. President Clinton had said he would veto Helms' bill if it passed the Senate. Isn't it magnificent how the Reps are throwing spoiled baby tantrums when they can't get their own way? ....................... * ........................ By the way, presidential candidate Senator Robert Dole was foiled by enough sane men in his own party when he attempted to prevent U.S. participation in the Women Conference in Beijing until the release of Chinese- American activist Harry Wu. Dole, in true "barking like a seal whenever the Christian Coalition speaks" aimed his ire at hurting women but didn't, of course, say anything about hurting big business contacts in China with an embargo. Wouldn't it have been more effective if the "caring" Sen. Dole had suggested pulling MacDonalds out of China? Or IBM - or any of the companies he and his wife own stock in? ....................... * ........................ A hearing by the Republican congress to cut the poor and children's benefits revealed that although low-income children and adults comprise almost three-quarters of Medicaid recipients, they account for less than a third of the program's costs. Most of the money is spent on the aged, blind and disabled, including those in nursing homes and institutions for the retarded. The facts didn't seem to deter the Reps vendetta against the poor (mostly women) and children. ....................... * ........................ Qwacky Duck quote of the month: We nominate Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. Why, he asked, can't the FDA simply slap a warning on the silicone breast implants and let women decide to chance them? It is estimated that 71% of all silicone breast implants will rupture at some time and dump a pound of deadly silicone into a woman's system. It has been charged that doctors do not fully inform their patients of the dangers because of the high profit of the operations and the pressures of the "Great American Breast Fetish"(*) force many women to have the implants. Thousands of women claim the implants them causing such things as severe autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Strange that the industry which claims its product is absolutely, 100% safe has agreed to a $4.25 billion court settlement with about 280,000 women, but that settlement is in jeopardy because there may not be enough money in it to cover all the injuries. (*) I love that quote from columnist Ellen Goodman. ....................... * ........................ Judge Kimba Wood who sentenced junk bond crook Michael Milken to 10 years in prison (against private advice that it would be political suicide) and who subsequently went down in flames over something that wasn't illegal but made to appear so when she was nominated for U.S. Attorney General by President Bill Clinton is back in the headlines. An infamous New York tabloid is running excerpts from a diary written by a man who mused, "She is absolutely wonderful, very intelligent, a complete woman, and able to give love wonderfully and freely." The so-called diaries are being used in a divorce case. Wood and her husband Time magazine columnist Michael Kramer had separated "by mutual agreement" before any of this came about. Under the libel laws in the U.S. a public person has almost no rights of protection against stories of this nature. ....................... * ........................ A 12-year-old girl was sentenced to one night in a juvenile jail by a North Carolina judge and her eight-year-old sister sentenced to one night at home because they refused to visit their father. Jailing his older daughter will show both girls "that their father loves them and wants to visit with them and that they can't repeat their mother's manipulations without drastic consequences occurring," the father Sheldon Nussbaum said. Nussbaum is appealing the decision to release his daughter Heidi. The mother says the girls refused to visit their father again after being told by him on previous visits that the mother was "wicked" and "deserved to die." ....................... * ........................ A Monroeville, Alabama jury convicted a man Tuesday of murdering his 14-month-old twin daughters a few months after he took out $8,000 life insurance policies on each twin and named himself as beneficiary, and one day after Kidd's employer began deducting $806 a month child support from his paycheck of about $2400 a month. Prosecutors also said Kidd had been notified of $415 he would owe in a second, separate child-support case and of a third child-support case pending against him. And about the same time, according to prosecutors, Kidd bought a house with $700 monthly payments. He did not get the death penalty because the jury didn't think the asphyxiation deaths were premeditated. The prosecution claimed that the father strapped the twins in their car seats and ran a hose from the exhaust pipe into the car, then removed the bodies and carried them into his mother's house where he "discovered" them dead later. ....................... * ........................ A huge, big publicity medical finding was just released! Stress doesn't cause heart attacks! How much did that bit of nonsensical investigation cost? Why didn't they just look at the lives of mothers? Talk about stress! But again, it's a case of only examine the lives and the dangers to those who look like yourself in the mirror ... ....................... * ........................ I don't have any of the details yet in the "put the blame on the volunteers" regarding NOW's failure to do more on Internet, but it seems like my little article was manipulated so it dropped a hornet's nest on Mary Elise Haug's head - AND THAT IS NOT FAIR ! Mary Elise is one of the most capable, hard working, and devoted NOW members I know. She is a VOLUNTEER and gets no NOW funds for all the work she has done. She works for a living and like most NOW activists, spends a lot of money for the cause of women's rights out of her own pocket. When National NOW's officialdom set up the WEB page without the knowledge or input by Haug or her committee (of which I am a member) I think we all thought we were fired ... or at least we were deemed superfluous by the powers that be. ....................... * ........................ The URLs to the most current weeks' worth of Catt's Claws set up on the Web by Laurie D. T. Mann, the Feminist Webitor, are: http://worcester.lm.com/lmann/feminist/cattsclaws.html The FTPs for Catt's Claws are (By William Affleck-Asch) FTP://ftp.eskimo.com/feminist/ (By Dorothy Dean) FTP.execpc.com ....................... * ........................ Women's rights are young and tender and we must protect them from the plagues of holy hypocrisy and newts. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- >>> Send your ideas, comments, and news to irenestuber@delphi.com for inclusion in the Catt's Claws feminist newsletter which will be emailed three times a week: Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. This is NOT an interactive discussion net but an exchange of information and 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. Irene Stuber. PO Box 6185, Hot Springs, AR 71902.<<<<