The Terri Schiavo Case: Where Are the Feminists?

Editor's note: This article was first posted on Wednesday, March 30.

What do Laci Peterson and Terri Schiavo have in common?

They're both women whose husbands chose to end their lives. Yet most of the feminist Left

wouldn't lift a finger

--or issue a press release--to speak for either of them.

The Schiavo case in particular calls out for a woman's rights advocate to be on the scene defending a defenseless woman against her husband. It's a case in which preventive action was a possibility. With Terri Schiavo's life in the balance, where is National Organization for Women president Kim Gandy? Or Pat Ireland? Or Gloria Steinem?

Peterson and Schiavo are real-world examples of women who need a voice. In both cases, these women's parents (and siblings in Schiavo's case) were those voices--in the courts, in media, as lobbyists. But the aid and organization of all those well-established "women's groups" was nowhere to be found.

With only a few exceptions--Gloria Allred, for instance, played a role in the Scott Peterson prosecution, representing Amber Frey--these high-profile life-and-death cases highlight the feminist Left's increasing irrelevance and moral impotence. These groups espouse what Pope John Paul II referred to in his "

Gospel of Life

" as a "culture of death." They support "choice" over life itself, whether it be the choice to

end a pregnancy in its latest stages

, a child's choice to terminate a pregnancy

without a parent's knowledge

--or, apparently, a man's choice to pull the plug on a burdensome spouse.

Obviously, the feminist Left is not explicitly advocating spousal "killing" as their new cause. But looking at the examples of Laci and Conner Peterson and Terri Schiavo, it's hard not to wonder who (or what) these groups that claim to lobby on behalf of American women actually represent. In the case of Laci and Conner's law--a fetal-homicide bill recognizing the murder of an unborn child as a murder in the commission of a federal crime--NOW & Company opposed the bill because they worried that it could hurt abortion rights down the road.

The fact is, the most well-known and politically active "women's groups" do not represent American women. NOW's

mission statement

may claim that it works to "end all forms of violence against women," but wouldn't that include protecting a mother and her unborn child, or a wife's right to food and water? At the end of the day, these groups represent supporters of legal abortion and reflexively oppose anything that could chip away at a shoddily constructed "right to privacy."

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