What She Wants is...
1
a monthly news journal produced for all women. There is no subject unsuitable for our readers and therefore you will find articles on every topic from poetry to politics in each issue. equal rights and civil rights
the right to decent health care and health information
... the right to control our bodies
the right to support ourselves and our families
... the right to oppose war
... the right to organize in unions and coalitions to advance our cause
... the right to excellence in education and freedom from prejudice in learning materials
... the right to accept or to reject motherhood
We are...
Mary Anne, Laurel Brummet, S. J. Caldwell, Jane Darrah, Marion Dorn, Linda Freeman, Kathy Greenberg, Leslie Greenhalgh, Nancy Handley, Sandy Handley, Meredith Holmes, Shelly Lowry, Mary McCartney, Cynthia Peck, Valerie Robinson, Barbara Rose, Linda Rothacker, Barbara Reusch, Karal Stern, Mary Waxman, Mary Walsh, Jackie Wessel, Helen Williams
What She Wants has open meetings, and any women interested in feminist newspaper work are welcome to attend. The response to our paper has been exciting and we really need to have more people working on it. All of us in the WSW collective have other jobs or go to school, and we put the paper out on our own time. Not only do we need writers and people to sell the paper, we need people to write us letters and give us feedback. We usually meet on Saturday afternoons. Write to us at
P.O. Box 18072
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
KIDNAPPING
Once again 'motherhood and apple pie' have been invoked to distract us from the horrors of war and extract our money. Ambassador Martin returns from Vietnam humiliated and defeated, scattering Vietnamese babies before him like sucker bait. 'When these children land in the U.S., they will be subject to television, radio, and press agency coverage and the effect will be tremendous' Ambassador Martin.
A few women have rushed in gurgling and cooing but many more were pulled up short by news reports trickling in about the real identity, and conditions of the Vietnamese children,
Who are they? Muoi MacDonald, interpreter at the Presidio Army Base receiving center, 'Most of the children who were brought here have one or two parents but nobody paid any attention to that'. An AP report from Saigon: 'The youngsters left Saigon to the sound of wailing from children and from foster mothers...families saw off foster brothers and sisters. One weeping mother clung to the window grill of one bus hauling children as it headed toward the airport.' In time of war families are broken up, children sent to live with friends and relatives or lost in huge refugee camps. It is impossible under such conditions to do adequate research on separate children. For this reason the Geneva Conventions prohibit the international adoption of children from war zones.
It became clear after the crash of the Air Force C5-A, carrying one of the first loads of children, that little or no care was given the children. They were packed into the hold of the plane where there were no seats, no oxygen masks and only a few seat belts. The adults who accompanied them were seated in a passenger compartment immediately behind the pilot's cockpit. Most of them survivednearly 200 children died. Adequate food and water were not provided for the journey.
Dr.Stalcup, Chief pediatric resident at the University of California Medical Center said that the arrival of the surviving children 'was the most incredible scene of deprivation and illness I had ever seen.'
The conditions in the American run and financed orphanages that some of the children were leaving were no better. Dr. Wayne McKinney, Chief of pediatrics, Honolulu Children's Hospital, 'You walk into them and they look like Buchenwald.'
When the children arrived the treatment was no more humane. Brothers and sisters were sent to separate families. Letters the children carried from parents asking for their children to be returned after the war were taken away and destroyed. 'There were two unrelated girls with the same name, one four years old and the other one seven. Both were half Vietnamese and half American. A couple from Atlantic City had been assigned to take the four year old. They looked at her, decided she was too young, found the other girl with the same name and walked out with her.' Muoi McDonald. 'If people didn't find the child they were to adopt, they just went shopping around through all the rooms for another one.' In other words it was a meat market where $1,000 $2,000 would buy 20 pounds of a half American child.
UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICAT
DOONESBURY
..POTATOES, SPINACH, AND SOME OF YOUR MOTHER'S SPECIALLY FRIED CHICKEN/
THAT'S ALL FOR ME? YOU MUST BE JOKING!
EAT UP, HONEYYOU'RE ABOUT
TO TASTE YOUR FIRST AMERICAN HOME COOKIN'!
I'VE NEVER SEEN
SO MUCH FOOD IN MY ENTIRE LIFE! WHY, THERE'S ENOUGH HERE TO FEED ALL OF DANANG!
By GARY TRUDEAU
THIS IS
SEE HOW
POSITIVELY EXCITED
OBSCENE! SHE IS ?!
"Mother, what is a Feminist?" "A Feminist, my daughter,
Is any woman now who cares
To think about her own affairs
As men don't think she oughter."
Alice Over LiMar, 1915
GBTrudn
Knowing all this, life goes on as usual here and people try to ignore ugly reality. Knowing that we have violated Geneva Conventions in bringing Vietnamese children here, Judge Skok in Lake County, 'helped to speed up the formal adoption process for the Vietnamese children' in his courtroom on Wednesday, April 23. Knowing that official Vatican spokesmen have denounced the airlift, calling for contributions to Catholic agencies still operating in Vietnam caring for orphans and refugees, the 'Catholic Social Services' here in the states offer rush 'home studies' at $400 apiece to prospective adoptive parents. As the private adoption agencies who are running the airlift cash in, the public agencies mutter privately about the lack of adequate screening. Many of the adopted children will later be rejected by their new parents and taken to the public agencies where they will be added to the many already under foster care and in institutions.
'You can't buy, beg, or steal an infant in America and over there some-half American children are just waiting for homes and we can't get them together,' says Frances Vigliemo, member of the 'Friends of the Children of Vietnam'. Her statement typifies the feelings of many of the new mothers. Here is the issue that has gone unaddressed. It is the desperation for motherhood that drives BRAINWASHED American women to want to 'buy, beg,or steal' children, Motherhood is still the only occupation held up as honorable and acceptable for the American woman, The unfortunate woman who unthinkingly accepts this dictum, yet is unable to bear a child can be driven to criminal acts to obtain her desire,
Yet other women do not accept dictated roles and official propoganda. Welfare Rights of Cleveland told WSW that here in Cuyahoga County we have 138-150 children available for adoption, cont. on page 10
page 2/What She Wants/June, 1975