NOW abandons all pretense...

... of advocacy for actual, you know... women.

Gov. Palin may be the second woman vice-presidential candidate on a major party ticket, but she is not the right woman. Sadly, she is a woman who opposes women's rights, just like John McCain.

The fact that Palin is a mother of five who has a 4-month-old baby, a woman who is juggling work and family responsibilities, will speak to many women. But will Palin speak FOR women? Based on her record and her stated positions, the answer is clearly No.

In a gubernatorial debate, Palin stated emphatically that her opposition to abortion was so great, so total, that even if her teenage daughter was impregnated by a rapist, she would "choose life" -- meaning apparently that she would not permit her daughter to have an abortion....

What McCain does not understand is that women supported Hillary Clinton not just because she was a woman, but because she was a champion on their issues. They will surely not find Sarah Palin to be an advocate for women.

Translation: Sarah Palin believes that fetuseses are people. Therefore, she's not really a woman. More like a man. With hooters.

Many women, of whom Sarah Palin is one, believe that (a) an unborn baby ("fetus," if you insist) is a human being, and (b) that human is therefore entitled to the same protection under the law as anyone else. I have yet to hear an explanation of why this is "anti-woman" that holds water for ten seconds.

(N.B.: The canard that it's really about a "woman's right to do what she wants with her own body" does not hold water. If that were universal, rape would be a constitutional right. It's my body, and I'll violate someone else with it if I want to. Right? I thought not.)

Crispy had a good point to make about he left's infatuation with the sacrament of abortion (edited for capitalization):

I'm going to say this one time, and then I'm going to shut up. Re: Bristol Palin. The American liberal is, - seriously, literally - pro-abortion and anti-choice, believes essentially in mandatory abortion. What does the average liberal mom do when her 16-year-old daughter shows up pregnant? Drags her immediately to the abortion clinic, whatever the daughter's (or the babydad's, of course) misgivings. The American left thinks that Bristol Palin having her baby is, actually, morally wrong. And more to the point, it shows something terrible about her mom, who had a moral obligation to make her daughter have an abortion. And one reason for this is that if you have a baby when you're 16, you will likely slip out of our class. You'll go live with Joey, the kid who wants to be a mechanic. You'll take classes at the community college instead of heading off to a decent school. You'll end up in a housecoat with a houseful of wailing babies, listening to Faith Hill. What haunts the imagination of the American liberal: my family, in the next generation, will be white trash. Maybe it would be more interesting to look at these sorts of motivations than to try to figure out "when human life begins."

I suspect it's time for NOW to change their acronym to "NOAFA": National Organization Against Feto-Americans. That way, they can deny all affiliation with that woman vaginally-unchallenged thing running for the vice-presidency.