.

She also urged the Democrats to name a woman as their vice presidential candidate; that year, largely as a result of NOW lobbying, Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate.

In 1985 Smeal ran for the office of NOW’s national president and emerged victorious, pledging to make the organization more militant in its pursuit of unfettered abortion rights, the reintroduction of the ERA, and economic justice for women.

In 1986 Smeal organized and directed America’s first national abortion-rights march in Washington, D.C., an event that drew more than 100,000 participants.

Smeal left NOW in 1987 because she now deemed it too conservative for her taste, and she became president of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) — an organization dedicated to “advancing the legal, social and political equality of women with men, countering the backlash to women’s advancement, and recruiting and training [new] young feminists.”

Condemning what she termed the “medical McCarthyism” of those who sought to withhold the abortifacient mifepristone (a.k.a.

Raised as a Roman Catholic by Italian-American parents, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in 1961, and a master’s degree in political science/public administration from the University of Florida in 1963. Both are targeting Jews, religious minorities, homosexuals, feminists and Americans…. Joining her at the podium were such notables as Julian Bond, Cesar Chavez, John Conyers, Michael Harrington, and Gloria Steinem.

In 1984 Smeal publishedWhy and How Women Will Elect the Next President, an “election handbook” that focused heavily on the “gender pay gap” and encouraged women to vote as a bloc for Democratic political candidates.

This “Pledge” campaign was a joint project of Code Pink, Global Exchange, The Liberty Tree Foundation, and United for Peace & Justice for the Democratic Revolution

Smeal was on the steering committee of the April 25, 2004 “March for Women’s Lives” in Washington, DC, an event that drew over a million people and advocated for taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.

In an effort to derail legislative measures aimed at placing some restrictions on women’s access to abortion, Smeal in October 2006 helped put together a Ms. magazine cover story — titled “We Had Abortions” — which listed the names of thousands of women who had terminated a pregnancy at some point in their lives.

Starve a Rat Today!”; and (c) “End Human Sacrifice! I could go on and on about the similarities.”

Over the years, Smeal has given money to the campaigns of a number of political candidates, all Democrats. “RU 486”) from the U.S. market, Smeal in 1988 launched a campaign pressuring the Food and Drug Administration to approve it. By Smeal’s telling, the Jones affair was nothing more than a “put-up job by the right wing.” On September 24, 1998, Smeal held a press conference with fellow feminists Betty Friedan and Patricia Ireland to announce that they would continue to enthusiastically support President Clinton, despite the sexual-misconduct allegations against him (including those involving Kathleen Willey and Monica Lewinsky), “because he’s so good on all our issues.” When Juanita Broaddrick in 1999 claimed that Bill Clinton had raped her two decades earlier, Smeal dismissed the allegation and dispatched a spokeswoman to announce that she (Smeal) was “too busy” to comment on the matter.

In the aftermath of what she termed the “stolen presidential election” of 2000, where George W.

Bush’s victory over Al Gore had been marred by the infamous Florida recount controversy, Smeal charged that “the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to stop the recounting” violated “the 13th and 19th Amendments” and “disparately penalized women and people of color who voted disproportionately for Gore nationwide.”

In November 2001, it was reported that Smeal supported Penn State University’s decision to use $10,000 from its “student activities fee” coffers to fund an on-campus “C*ntfest” featuring graphic exhibitions of female sexuality.

In December 2001, Smeal struck a deal that made the Feminist Majority Foundation the sole publisher of Ms.

Among the noteworthy donees are Tammy Baldwin, Barbara Boxer, Carol Moseley Braun, Hillary Clinton, Donna Edwards, Ted Kennedy, Carolyn Maloney, and Barack Obama. Washing Diapers Is Not Fulfilling.”

A fierce critic of George W. Bush for his opposition to unrestricted abortion-on-demand—as evidenced by his objection to “partial-birth abortion” and his support for the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act—Smeal said in 2007: “This current president is in the pocket of the Roman Catholic bishops and right-wing ministers who should clean their own houses and stop interfering with a woman’s right to family planning and abortion.”

Smeal cheered the Obama administration’s January 2012 announcement that religious hospitals, schools, charities, and other health- and social-service providers would eventually be forced, regardless of their religious or moral objections, to provide their employees with health-insurance plans covering the costs of abortifacient pills, sterilizations, and contraception.

The petition, which included the signature of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, was forwarded to Congress, the White House, and state legislatures.

Smeal was featured in the “Pioneer Feminists Project” that the Veteran Feminists of America (VFA) launched in 2006. Over 1.1 million people gathered on the National Mall to demand that women’s health, access to contraception, and abortion receive adequate funding.

Smeal serves on a number of boards, including the National Council for Research on Women, the National Organization for Women, the Executive Committee of the National Council of Women’s Organizations, and the Leadership Circle of the Alliance for Ratification of CEDAW.