<^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> ........Catt's Claws # 154 ... April 29, 1997......... ........ A Feminist Newsletter by Irene Stuber......... istuber@direclynx.net is solely responsible for its content Archives are found at http://www.imageworld.com/vsp/istuber <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> <^> Give 'em enough time and rope and they will hang themselves. Catt's Claws' author has been chastised, yelled at, and called names you wouldn't want your sailor cousin to hear - all for saying that gay MEN do not support lesbians or women in general. Why am I picking on my gay brothers, they want to know. We're not picking on anyone. We're simply reciting the known facts. Well, anyone who was around the last mayoral campaign in San Francisco knows that the gay men supported a male candidate and ignored with contempt the campaign of lesbian Roberta Achtenburg. And then there is the Log Cabin gay Republican men who support the destruction of welfare for single mothers... They shun women in AIDS help groups, fail to support research for AIDS/HIV care for women, want drugs to help *them* that might cause SERIOUS physical defects for babies, oppose testing for AIDS/HIV, even for rapists (and yes, gay men with AIDS have spread it into the female population). Most gay men are married to women also. And now some of the men of the Castro district of S.F. as well as many areas throughout the U.S. are wearing t-shirts with the word Degeneris crossed out and the word Ginsberg written in. Degeneris is - well, you know if you haven't been living on Mars ... And Ginsberg is the dead, white homosexual male poet ... The past director of the Gay Task Force, Robert Bray, is putting down the Ellen coming out and saying that Ginsberg was a "true" hero. Robert, where can I send the money for that Samuel Adams beer you bought me some years back? You don't think it takes REAL guts to put a multi-million dollar career in jeopardy? What did Ginsberg have to lose? After Shelley, and Whitman, and Shakespeare, and etc., etc., what's one more gay male poet? Why call it more courageous than the courage of Anne Heche, Ellen's partner, for also coming out and probably ruining a budding movie career ... no one now believes that Heche will get the staring role she was scheduled to get since she has "come out." How many millions has she thrown away because movie execs - many of them gay men - will not support a gay WOMAN as a heterosexual love interest even though there's history with such men as Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, and Sir Lawrence Olivier ... to name just a couple of dead ones. There are a NUMBER of gay MEN movie stars in the closet - which is their business - and none of ours except to note that they exist. Guyz, why crucify a couple of women who have more courage and honor than good sense - and who have thrown open the closet door to make one small step forward for ALL humankind - yours included. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . The 30-year-old woman who had been comatose for more than ten years when she was raped by a nursing home worker and gave birth to a son when her parents refused an abortion has died. The cause of death was not disclosed. Comatose and then pregnancy? Who needs a picture of what happened to the woman? The baby has all sorts of serious health problems which is not surprising either. Anyway, John Horace was convicted of the rape of the comatose woman and his attorney is appealing on the grounds - fasten the seat belts - that pregnancy does not prove rape (or sexual intercourse). And the attorney has a point - pregnancy does NOT equate with sexual intercourse in our high techie world. And to our knowledge, making someone pregnant in our stone-age-religious-tradition is NOT a crime, even if the woman dies of that pregnancy. Men have protected that little loophole through the millennia, giving themselves the right to kill a woman through repeated pregnancies through his RIGHT to conjugal relations and PREVENTING a woman from the right to say "no." Now tell me that our laws of Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus and Paul don't need revision. Let me give you a for-instant. Some husband/boyfriend/weirdo wants a woman to have his child. Using whatever, he impregnates her without any sex. It can be done. Is it rape? Without the right of abortion, the woman is then FORCED to have the child and be legally responsible for it. (Or like occurred in Nebraska, the UNWED mother was kidnapped by the father's FAMILY until it was too late to have an abortion.) Oh, John Horace's attorney is a woman and she, like every other woman KNOWS that intercourse is not a requisite for pregnancy. But our state laws do not. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s . . . . . . . The right wingers who believe life begins when a sperm meets an egg are going to have to face reality some day. Tens of thousands of fertilized eggs - zygotes or embryos are steadily accumulating in tanks of liquid nitrogen across the world as a by-product of in-vitro fertilization, and according to the sacred sperm men, they are each and every one a human being. And yet the fertilized eggs sit in these tanks - in legal and ethical and medical limbo. What will happen to them, Mr. Falwell, Mr. Reed, Mr. Robertson, and Mr. Hyde (who may be Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives by the time the autumn leaves fall). . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Have any of you noticed that although all the participants in the production of Dolly, the ewe clone, were all female, it is the MEN who are doing to writing and talking. A lot of male columnists, when writing about Dolly, never used the words she, her, or female. Guyz, Dolly is a EWE. Herself-mother is a EWE. Her gestation-mother is a EWE. EWE is a female sheep. And you can take that to the bank. But spare us the job of trying to educate male newspaper and magazine and TV and radio male writers. After all, they wrote about a surrogate mother when the woman was the TRUE biological mother - it was her egg. And now they are writing about a 63-year-old mother who is not actually a mother because the egg was NOT hers. Now, if we can only convince the guy writers to take Biology 101 instead of depending on what they heard in the locker room of PS 86. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . The phone number is 1-800-991-1997 to object to Chrysler Corporation's decision to boycott the coming out episode of Ellen. But before we give Chrysler too big a finger, let's remember this caving in to the right-wing whackos is nothing new. Way back when in an episode of _Maude_ when the lead character had an abortion, more viewers tuned in that episode than any other TV show in history - and it did not have one single commercial sponsor. So Chrysler is slicing its own tires - a huge viewing audience and Chrysler will not be in evidence. Of course, Johnson and Johnson is also boycotting the show ... I guess they think the rabid right buys lots more baby powder than the liberals ... Oh yeah? We've decided to list the companies that have had strange advertising patterns on our Web site Do send your recommendations ... By the way, Chrysler now has a "press two to comment on the Ellen show." That's real clout! So many calls they had to mechanize things. Do call just to hear Chrysler's mealy, close to the ground excuse. Finger down the throat gag time. . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . The following is written by a medical doctor regarding the development of afetus. We are posting it in total because there are a lot of us who have been mightily distressed to see the lack of information put out by the feminist and feminist/medical people. Nancy Phillips, M.D. writes: "I would like to see a higher level of public science and medicine literacy, and am glad to help educate. Please feel free to use in Catt's Claws or pass on elsewhere, with credits to Langman, for those who wish more information. "The time table of human development, distilled from a standard human embryology text (often used in medical school anatomy classes), Langman, Medical Embryology, Williams and Wilkins Press: "*day 1 fertilization process "*day 2 two cell stage (30 hours), 4 cell stage (40 hours)- if a cell falls off the cluster, it can develop into another embryo plus placenta, i.e, identical twin) "*day 3 morula (solid ball of cells) "*day 4 early blastocyst (ball of cell forms a small central cavity - cells are now committed to becoming either placental cells or embryo cells, though they can't be recognized as such) "*day 6-7 implantation starts. Group of cells at one pole of the cyst lining is now recognizable as the embryonic precursor tissue. "*day 8 two-layer disc of embryonic tissue "*days 8-12 conceptus gradually covered by maternal tissue, maternal placenta bed vessels expand, placental primitive vessels start to form "*day 13 uteroplacental circulation begins "*day 14 embryonic disc forms "primitive streak," from which a third layer of embryonic cells emerge "*day 15 three-layer embryonic disc complete "*day 17 notochord forms (axial scaffold later replaced by spinal column) "*day 19 top layer of disc (ectoderm) forms a central flat strip (neural plate) that is the nervous system precursor "*day 20 middle layer of disc (mesoderm) starts partitioning into segments called somites, which will later become ribs, muscles, etc. "*dys. 20-23 neural plate rolls into a tube and sinks below the surface of the ectoderm. This tube will form the spinal cord and brain eventually. "*dys. 21-22 heart tube forms (yes, a simple tube). Other vessels and blood cells also form at this time. "*dys. 28-31 arm, leg, and tail buds form. These look like flippers. Endoderm layer gives rise to lung, liver buds. "*week 5 kidney buds form. Eye and lens buds form in association. Heart tube folds and forms the four chambers. Heart now beating. "*week 6 "indifferent" gonads form, having no male or female characteristics at this time. External genitalia also indistinguishable. Hand and foot plates start to separate the fingers and toes. "*week 8 lung buds continue to branch. Gonads now distinguishable as ovary or testis. Eyes, nostrils, mouth identifiable externally. Primitive uterus and fallopian tubes form. * By the end of the 8th week, all major organs have their basic forms. The rest of development is required to make the organs FUNCTIONAL.* Most major anatomic birth defects are caused by damage during the 3rd to 8th week of gestation. "Later events: "Brain: Cell proliferation and migration to their eventual location occurs up to birth. Development of connections between cells occurs well into childhood, as occasionally major portions of cerebral cortex can be damaged in infancy and the brain can reroute the necessary connections so the function of the damaged portion can be taken over by nearby healthy tissue. Second-trimester brains do NOT have the full complement of neurons yet, and thus do not have the gyri and sulci (cords and grooves, giving more surface area) on the surface of the brain. Fetal movements become POSSIBLE in the 4th month. Spinal-level reflexes (the kind elicited by the doctor with the rubber hammer) can occur in the 2nd trimester, but some reflexes aren't fully mature until after birth. Cerebellum and spinal cord are also developing, and coordinated movement takes longer to develop. "Lung: Branching of lung airspace tree continues to 17 weeks, then the lung vessels start associating with the airspaces (note, in utero, these airspaces are filled with amniotic fluid). Enough differentiation occurs by 24 weeks to make the fetus capable of breathing air, at least for a short time. Maturation of the air sac lining continues to week 36-37, when the lung is now adequately supplied with the surfactant proteins that help the air sacs stay open for extended periods of time. Lung maturation is the limiting factor in preterm viability. "As you can see by this precis, development is a gradual process. Even defining conception is difficult (does it occur when the sperm and egg cell membranes fuse? When the sperm nucleus is extruded into the egg cytoplasm? When the separate sperm and egg nuclei replicate to become diploid (2 sets of chromosomes)? When chromosomes associate in preparation for division? after the first division?). "The development process is fraught with peril, and up to 50% of fertilizations fail to produce viable offspring, with most of the loss occurring (often unrecognized) very early, often before implantation. Genetically speaking, a new human life occurs with the successful fertilization of one egg by one sperm, and subsequent first cell division - a new combination of genetic material has come into existence, for however short a time. "The theological definition of human life has varied over the years and among various beliefs. The current definition of "sacralized" life as starting at fertilization is quite new. "The common ancient, medieval, and early modern understanding was that ensoulment occurred at or near the time of quickening (first fetal movements perceptible by the mother), and this was codified in medieval times (Aquinas, I think, then canon law)as ensoulment of a male fetus at 40 days, female fetus at 70 days. From an anatomist's point of view, you can't tell them apart at 40 days! From a mother's standpoint, they both start moving at the same time. An alternate theory of development, originated by the ancient Greeks and carried through to medieval times, was that the sperm carried a tiny person (homunculus) that grew in the nourishing soil of the womb. Implied in this is that the soul is transmitted through the father's sperm. "[This reminds me about the satirical poem chanted by pro-choicers to anti-choice demonstrators - "Every sperm is sacred, Every sperm is great, If you dare to waste them, God gets quite irate"]. Modern philosophy and theology in pro-choice denominations tends to regard ensoulment as a more gradual process analogous to physical development. The capacity for "consciousness" (rather difficult to define and harder to measure in utero) is often seen as a prerequisite for fully human status by liberal denomination thinkers and non-religious rationalists. "The anti-abortionists have used the portion of the development story that suits their ends, namely genetic uniqueness after fertilization. Quotes from scientists are used to camouflage the anti-abortionists' true justification, namely a theology that ensoulment occurs at conception. This particular theologic point is not shared by a large number of sincere religious people (and atheists), but these groups have not generally used the depiction of development as a gradual process in order to make a biological supporting argument for a pro-abortion position." -- Nancy Phillips, M.D. "P.S. It has been observed by more than one feminist scholar that the famous Lennart Nilsson photos of embryos (the ones the anti-choice people love to use) do not show the woman-"container", and depict the fetus as floating in space as in the movie "2001". Nilsson did this for clarity and artistic composition, but has had the unfortunate effect of allowing the woman to be forgotten." . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . When I sent to some friends the URL of the web site of a right wing extremist group that is gathering names of people involved in women's health care and calling for violence and Nuremberg type trials, one of my email buddies, Barbara Wilson who has a degree is pyc, wrote: "There are no reasonable, sane explanations for those psychoceramics (cracked pots) and it is an exercise in futility and frustration to even try... But what often escapes me is why the level headed pro choice folks do not at least counter that fanatical horse puckey with some logic. At least in terms of the actual size of the zygote and subsequent fetus - the whackos use enlarged photos yet I've rarely seen accurate depictions of first trimester specs. "Anyone with an iota of education knows that at four weeks it's the size of an aspirin, at six weeks not much bigger than a dime, and at twelve weeks barely a silver dollar - yet this never seems to be addressed. No wonder the school kids are confused when the anti choice zealots get near the schools with their "kodak monstrosities". . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . By the way, if sperm determines sex - isn't the sperm what determines homosexuality? You've all heard the cutsey remark, "My mother made me a queer...." with the rejoiner, "Will she knit me one too?" And all the while, it is probably Daddy that done it ... . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . Because the feminist organizations of this nation are failing women, (their words, not mine) the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists are launching a major nationwide campaign of their own to inform women about the best-kept "morning-after" contraceptive secret: common birth control pills. Surveys show that most women are not aware of "emergency" birth control that will prevent 75% of pregnancies AFTER sex. Proudly, Catt's Claws has been posting the information at least once a month for a long, long time, vowing it shall not be hidden. The OB-GYNs are doing what no women's organization would do - and that is pitiful. By the way, tell the abortion opponents that the pills work BEFORE an embryo implants in the uterus so there's no abortion. But then, why bother. They believe in the sacred sperm theory ... thousands or millions of little human souls masturbatorily ejaculated into the night sheets or the shower ... . . . . . . . ^c^l^a^w^s^ . . . . . . . You know, Patsy Ireland, instead of sending out all those letters that gravely exaggerated the conditions of your early work history, you could have sent out the following and done some REAL good - an action that would have been new for your six years as head of National NOW - BTW, are you sure you believe in choice? National NOW has been keeping so much about birth control and abortion a secret: Catt's Claws monthly reminder: The correct FDA approved dosage for the morning after abortifacient is: 2 Wyeth's Ovral or 4 tablets 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 so take an antiemetic (antinausea) medication such as Dramamine with the pills. This method must be used within 24-72 hours of the intercourse. Later than that a more complex method is necessary. The Emergency Contraception (EC or Morning After Pill). Their number is 1-800-584-9911. They are available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, and will refer you to the nearest place to get EC. EC has a website (http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/ec.html. EC hotline has information about emergency contraception and have a directory of more that 1800 clinicians willing to prescribe emergency contraceptives. . . . . . . . ^c^c^ . . . . . . . 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 istuber@direclynx.net 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 and archiving them. Copyright 1997, Irene Stuber. PO Box 6185, Hot Springs, AR 71902, email istuber@direclynx.net<<<< To receive Catt's Claws by email, write and in the body of the note We thank Jennifer Gagliardi for handling the madding subscription list through her listserv. And a BIG thanks to Sam McMillan for doing our Web site (yeah, it's a guy!). http://www.imageworld.com/vsp/istuber -- End --