AddieStan

cross-posted from The Huffington Post The killing of George Tiller , a doctor who performed late-term abortions, will likely be attributed to some lone and deranged individual, acting on his or her own. (As I write, the suspect remains at large.) Indeed, Operation Rescue, the hold-no-prisoners anti-abortion group, issued an immediate statement from Operation Rescue President Troy Newman , decrying Tiller's shooting as "a cowardly act." In fact, the hands are many in the death of George Tiller, some more directly than others. Take Ann Coulter , for example. I watched her describe , to a church full of right-wing activists, abortion-clinic doctors and health care personnel who were murdered as either having been shot, "...or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle." And she's still out there today, spewing the same bile with violent force. Several weeks ago, President Barack Obama 's commencement address at ...

Your blogstress is still wrestling with the decision of Barack Obama (whom her feminist self supported all the way back in the primaries) to anoint the right-wing, anti-gay, anti-woman Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the presidential inaugural ceremonies. Mon Dieu, mes amis ! How to make sense of it? One hopes that Mr. Obama has a trick or two up his sleeve in bestowing this honor on one who has compared pro-choice people to Holocaust deniers, equated gay marriage with polygamy and marriage between an adult and a child (and later denied having done so), and preaches that wives should submit to their husbands. To many liberals, Warren's words are hard not to take personally, especially if you're a woman and/or a member of the LGBT community. This is no mere game of "dozens"; reports come in daily of LGBT people assaulted or killed for no other reason than being queer; meanwhile the terrorism of anti-choice forces has reduced abortion, in many are...

cross-posted from The Huffington Post Can you be a supporter of Sarah Palin and still be a feminist? Well, I guess you could call yourself a feminist -- that is, if you think that, as a woman, you still have rights equal to those of a man when: * You do not have the right of self-determination over your own body * Even if impregnated through rape or incest you are forced to bear a child * You're told you're entitled to equal pay, but forbidden to sue for it under most circumstances * Information on how to prevent your own pregnancy is withheld from you in sex education classes * If you're a spiritually powerful or otherwise unusual woman, your harassment can justified as protection from "witchcraft" In that case, I guess it could be said that Elaine Lafferty, a former Ms. magazine editor proudly stumping for Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, is a feminist. Otherwise, it just doesn't add up. In an apparent diversion from answering the questi...

In this morning's edition of "Meet the Press", host Tom Brokaw confronted Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joe Biden with an admonishment delivered to Nancy Pelosi by Archbishop Edward Cardinal Egan of New York in response to Pelosi's assertion that "doctors of the Church have not been able to define when life begins and that over the history of the Church, this is an issue of controversy." Egan issued a statement that concluded: "Anyone who dares to defend that they may be legitimately killed because another human being 'chooses' to do so or for any other equally ridiculous reason should not be providing leadership in a civilized democracy worthy of the name." Biden handled the situation brilliantly, stating that his personal belief that life begins at conception stems from his faith (ergo, not science), and he has no right to impose his faith on others. When pressed on the Pelosi/Egan controversy, Biden showed off his Jesuit edu...

American Prospect writing fellow Dana Goldstein has a fascinating post up at her personal blog on how Anne Rice -- she of Interview With a Vampire fame -- has endorsed Hillary Clinton , even though Rice herself has converted to Catholicism and become ardently anti-abortion. Figures that the purveyor of tales of the undead should become the defender of the unborn.

How can you tell if a person's -- or an institution's -- opposition to abortion is simple misogyny, or is based on a sincere belief that abortion is the killing of a human being? Look to the person's -- or institution's -- position on birth control. If you really thought human life to begin at conception, and you wanted to reduce the number of abortions, you would support artificial contraception, no? And so it is that your blogstress has come to the sad conclusion that the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, the church of her baptism and upbringing, find the justification for their bullying behavior on abortion in their disdain for women -- evidenced, as well, by their pathological need to keep women out of the ecclesiastical club. Today we find the bishops at it again, picking on poor Rudy Giuliani, who apparently has not had a bad enough week, what with the revelation that the Hero Mayor of 911 New York couldn't manage to make it to those inconveniently sche...

Bill Donohue , perhaps your blogstress's favorite bigot, has a piece at Human Events Online in which he rehashes his charge of anti-Catholicism against your écrivaine for having dared to note, in 2005, that George W. Bush 's nomination of the very Catholic John Roberts to the top spot on the high court was a smooth move. Her point was that Roberts' religion would give the right cover when the liberals on the Judiciary Committee, before which he would appear for his confirmation hearing, pushed him for his views on abortion. "Anti-Catholic!" they would cry, of anyone who dared to challenge Roberts views on Roe v. Wade . Grouping your cyberscribe among the likes of the besotted Christopher Hitchens, the probing Nina Totenberg and the saintly E.J. Dionne, he then said that none of them could surpass your blogstress in one critical area: When John Roberts was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, his Catholicism became an issue with pundits like NPR’s Nina Totenb...