Cathy Young is not happy with the let-Terri-Schiavo-live conservatives.

She writes, in “Lifers on the Loose,” that all she sees is a “sickening display of cynicism and fanaticism.” She takes aim at hysteric in chief K-Lo (right after Tom DeLay!), saying, “On the website of the conservative National Review, writer Kathryn Jean Lopez railed at the feminist groups’ lack of outrage that “a man—and his male lawyer and doctor—backed up by a male judge, is cutting off his wife’s food.” We live in bizarre times when a conservative chides feminists for not acting like professional male-bashers. “

Bizarre, perhaps. But their behavior is a little bizarre, dontcha think? Women’s-studies courses are full of ranting about the bad things marriage does to women. But there is a real-world example of a woman who is crying out for a voice, whose very life is being ended by a man with pretty severe conflicts of interest. You gotta wonder what these gals stand for.

Do I want “male bashing”? Give me a break (my routine nagging of the men in The Corner and irrational Star Trek bans don’t count). And, as readers in this parts know, while I don’t want to harp on the person of Michael Schiavo, I think the contention that he is some kind of Everyman doesn’t hold water. He’s moved on, creating what should have been a legal problem for him, but foremost, an ethical one, as her poor parents stand on the sidelines, begging desperately for their daughter’s life.

But most who are not blinded by a reflex to think anti-abortion=hysteric, I think, can see the feminist point: They prove themselves, time after time, to be about one thing: keeping abortion legal. And they won’t touch anything they fear might get in the way—and chip away at, in any theoretical way, that flimsily constructed “right to privacy” (who knows what the enamations from Schiavo penumbras can mean for Roe!).

As I’ve said before, I hate that this Schiavo case rose to a level of congressional involvement—these are heartbreaking issues families should deal with; if they can’t, courts should deal with fairly. Whether the latter happened is questionable at best, and there entered the real public debate. That liberal feminists did not rush to Terri Schiavo’s bedside is an odd thing, not one not unworthy of notice.