Morning Gloria—Womb transplants could be available to infertile or childless women as early as next year, leading researchers say. The procedure is designed to help women whose wombs were damaged by disease or defect, and the transplanted wombs would come from either living or dead donors. Donors and recipients would have to be a close tissue match in order to prevent the recipient's body from rejecting the organ, and the recipient would not be able to conceive or give birth naturally, as the transplanted tissue could not hold up to the strain.
Obviously, if this comes to the US, this is only going to be a procedure accessible to the most privileged of privileged, women who can afford to receive a womb transplant (or who has Crazy Dream Insurance that pays for things like post-NCAA tournament depression-related acupuncture), who can afford the ensuing IVF necessary to conceive, who can afford the expensive immunosuppressant drugs needed to prevent organ rejection and the cost of a hospital Cesarean section. They'd also have to be able to afford to have the womb removed after a pregnancy or two, as long term use the rejection-preventing drugs womb recipients must take can lead to harmful complications.
While this procedure would, on one hand, offer a subset of the population more choices about their bodies, it would also force women who choose to undergo it to surrender their autonomy to the medical profession almost completely. Advocates of adoption also aren't thrilled with the prospect of the medical community investing millions of dollars making sure that women can bear their own biological children when orphanages the world over are crowded with unwanted children (even though, one could argue that how other people choose to have or not have children is extra super Not About You). And, of course, there's the contingent of the population that gets mad any time any medical breakthrough happens that makes women's lives easier or gives them more choices, because women deserve to be punished for every possible decision that they could make and people get spooked when women are able to exert more control over their own bodies.Harumph harumph, they said, monocles quivering with rage,Who's to say this isn't going to lead to women getting rid of their wombs willy-nilly? How am I supposed to control women when women are out there controlling themselves?
Thus far, the procedures only been performed on small animals, but researchers are optimistic that it could be widespread- in as many as one in ten hospitals- in the short term.
Womb transplants that would allow childless women to have babies could be available as early as next year, a leading researcher said last night.
Following successful animal experiments, doctors are ready to implant women with healthy wombs from donors.
The forecast will bring hope to the thousands of women of childbearing age who are born without a womb or have had it removed because of disease.
Breakthrough: Women could have womb transplants as early as next year
But critics warned that the breakthrough erodes the sanctity of life and questioned its safety.
The prediction comes from one of the world’s leading pioneers in female organ transplants, Professor Mats Brannstrom of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, who has spent more than a decade perfecting the complex surgical techniques needed for a womb transplant.
His team have succeeded in implanting donated wombs in mice, rats, sheep and pigs and are now hoping to achieve the same success in women.
A British team, from Hammersmith Hospital in London, have also been developing womb transplants and have carried out successful experiments on rabbits. The only human womb transplant so far took place in Saudi Arabia in 2000, but the donated organ failed after four months.
THE DONOR DILEMMA...
The wombs used in the transplants could come from either living or dead donors. Doctors say a living close relative such as a sister, after she has completed her own family, or a mother would be a good tissue match. But others believe the only way to obtain a womb with the blood vessels needed to take the strain of pregnancy would be to take it from a dead donor. After the transplant, a woman would be likely to need IVF to become pregnant and a caesarean section to deliver the baby because the new tissue would not stand up to a natural birth. She would also have to take immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection.
The British and Swedish researchers believe this was because of the complexity of connecting the new womb to the body’s blood supply.
But in the latest issue of the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research, Professor Brannstrom said: ‘During the last decade, there has been considerable progress in surgical techniques.’
The professor told the Daily Mail that he expects womb transplants to be carried out as early as next year, at one of ten hospitals around the world.
The transplant would only be temporary.
The long-term dangers of the drugs needed to prevent rejection would mean that the new womb would have to be removed after one or two pregnancies.
Susan Seenan, of the patient support group Infertility Network UK, said: ‘Women unable to conceive and carry their own baby face real heartache, and womb transplants may be one way of helping them.
‘However a great deal of thought and discussion on all the issues would be required.’
Josephine Quintavalle, of campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: ‘I think it is going to be really hard to prove that this is safe, and the experiment is not so much on the woman having the transplant but on the baby she is carrying.
‘We have to understand how difficult it is for some people who cannot have children but we can’t start this mentality of there always being an answer.’
There are so many questions still looming about the U.S. involvement in Libya, and that's what I wanted to get to with the secretaries. What's the end game and what happens if Khaddafy clings to power? Why Libya and not Middle East countries like Bahrain or Yemen where similar government crackdowns are taking place?
It is clear President Obama wants Khaddafy out of power, but Gates told me the allies would not do so militarily. "We have things in our toolbox in addition to hammers," he said.
It seems much of the administration's motivation for taking action in Libya was driven by a fear of what could happen had we been caught retroactively. Here's what Clinton told me:
"Can you imagine, David, if we were sitting here and Khaddafy had gotten to Benghazi? And in a city of 700,000 people had massacred tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands had fled over the border, destabilizing Egypt. Everybody would be saying, 'Why didn’t the President do something?'"
Clinton said many of the questions that Congress and the public has will be answered during the president's address Monday night.
For the GOP response from Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) and analysis from our roundtable, visitour website.
And be sure to check back to our site this Wednesday when we'll post my interview with newly elected RNC Chair Reince Priebus.
As I expected, now that Qaddafi’s advantage in armor and heavy weapons is being neutralized by the UN allies’ air campaign,the liberation movement is regaining lost territory. Liberators took back Ajdabiya and Brega (Marsa al-Burayqa), key oil towns, on Saturday into Sunday morning, and seemed set to head further West. This rapid advance is almost certainly made possible in part by the hatred of Qaddafi among the majority of the people of these cities. The Buraiqa Basin contains much of Libya’s oil wealth, and the Transitional Government in Benghazi will soon again control 80 percent of this resource, an advantage in their struggle with Qaddafi.
I am unabashedly cheering the liberation movement on, and glad that the UNSC-authorized intervention has saved them from being crushed. I can still remember when I was a teenager how disappointed I was that Soviet tanks were allowed to put down the Prague Spring and extirpate socialism with a human face. Our multilateral world has more spaces in it for successful change and defiance of totalitarianism than did the old bipolar world of the Cold War, where the US and the USSR often deferred to each other’s sphere of influence.
The United Nations-authorized intervention in Libya has pitched ethical issues of the highest importance, and has split progressives in unfortunate ways. I hope we can have a calm and civilized discussion of the rights and wrongs here.
On the surface, the situation in Libya a week and a half ago posed a contradiction between two key principles of Left politics: supporting the ordinary people and opposing foreign domination of them. Libya’s workers and townspeople had risen up to overthrow the dictator in city after city– Tobruk, Dirna, al-Bayda, Benghazi, Ajdabiya, Misrata, Zawiya, Zuara, Zintan. Even in the capital of Tripoli, working-class neighborhoods such as Suq al-Jumah and Tajoura had chased out the secret police. In the two weeks after February 17, there was little or no sign of the protesters being armed or engaging in violence.
The libel put out by the dictator, that the 570,000 people of Misrata or the 700,000 people of Benghazi were supporters of “al-Qaeda,” was without foundation. That a handful of young Libyan men from Dirna and the surrounding area had fought in Iraq is simply irrelevant. The Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq was for the most part not accurately called ‘al-Qaeda,’ which is a propaganda term in this case. All of the countries experiencing liberation movements had sympathizers with the Sunni Iraqi resistance; in fact opinion polling shows such sympathy almost universal throughout the Sunni Arab world. All of them had at least some fundamentalist movements. That was no reason to wish the Tunisians, Egyptians, Syrians and others ill. The question is what kind of leadership was emerging in places like Benghazi. The answer is that it was simply the notables of the city. If there were an uprising against Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, it would likely unite businessmen and factory workers, Catholics and secularists. It would just be the people of Milan. A few old time members of the Red Brigades might even come out, and perhaps some organized crime figures. But to defame all Milan with them would be mere propaganda.
Then Muammar Qaddafi’s sons rallied his armored brigades and air force to bomb the civilian crowds and shoot tank shells into them. Members of the Transitional Government Council in Benghazi estimate that 8000 were killed as Qaddafi’s forces attacked and subdued Zawiya, Zuara, Ra’s Lanuf, Brega, Ajdabiya, and the working class districts of Tripoli itself, using live ammunition fired into defenseless rallies. If 8000 was an exaggeration, simply “thousands” was not, as attested by Left media such as Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! As Qaddafi’s tank brigades reached the southern districts of Benghazi, the prospect loomed of a massacre of committed rebels on a large scale.
The United Nations Security Council authorization for UN member states to intervene to forestall this massacre thus pitched the question. If the Left opposed intervention, it de facto acquiesced in Qaddafi’s destruction of a movement embodying the aspirations of most of Libya’s workers and poor, along with large numbers of white collar middle class people. Qaddafi would have reestablished himself, with the liberation movement squashed like a bug and the country put back under secret police rule. The implications of a resurgent, angry and wounded Mad Dog, his coffers filled with oil billions, for the democracy movements on either side of Libya, in Egypt and Tunisia, could well have been pernicious.
The arguments against international intervention are not trivial, but they all did have the implication that it was all right with the world community if Qaddafi deployed tanks against innocent civilian crowds just exercising their right to peaceful assembly and to petition their government. (It simply is not true that very many of the protesters took up arms early on, though some were later forced into it by Qaddafi’s aggressive military campaign against them. There still are no trained troops to speak of on the rebel side).
Some have charged that the Libya action has a Neoconservative political odor. But the Neoconservatives hate the United Nations and wanted to destroy it. They went to war on Iraq despite the lack of UNSC authorization, in a way that clearly contravened the UN Charter. Their spokesman and briefly the ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, actually at one point denied that the United Nations even existed. The Neoconservatives loved deploying American muscle unilaterally, and rubbing it in everyone’s face. Those who would not go along were subjected to petty harassment. France, then deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz pledged, would be “punished” for declining to fall on Iraq at Washington’s whim. The Libya action, in contrast, observes all the norms of international law and multilateral consultation that the Neoconservatives despise. There is no pettiness. Germany is not ‘punished’ for not going along. Moreover, the Neoconservatives wanted to exercise primarily Anglo-American military might in the service of harming the public sector and enforced ‘shock therapy’ privatization so as to open the conquered country to Western corporate penetration. All this social engineering required boots on the ground, a land invasion and occupation. Mere limited aerial bombardment cannot effect the sort of extreme-capitalist revolution they seek.Libya 2011 is not like Iraq 2003 in any way.
Allowing the Neoconservatives to brand humanitarian intervention as always their sort of project does a grave disservice to international law and institutions, and gives them credit that they do not deserve, for things in which they do not actually believe.
The intervention in Libya was done in a legal way. It was provoked by a vote of the Arab League, including the newly liberated Egyptian and Tunisian governments. It was urged by a United Nations Security Council resolution, the gold standard for military intervention. (Contrary to what some alleged, the abstentions of Russia and China do not deprive the resolution of legitimacy or the force of law; only a veto could have done that. You can be arrested today on a law passed in the US Congress on which some members abstained from voting.)
Among reasons given by critics for rejecting the intervention are:
1. Absolute pacifism (the use of force is always wrong)
2. Absolute anti-imperialism (all interventions in world affairs by outsiders are wrong).
3. Anti-military pragmatism: a belief that no social problems can ever usefully be resolved by use of military force.
Absolute pacifists are rare, and I will just acknowledge them and move on. I personally favor an option for peace in world policy-making, where it should be the default initial position. But the peace option is trumped in my mind by the opportunity to stop a major war crime.
Leftists are not always isolationists. In the US, progressive people actually went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, forming the Lincoln Brigade. That was a foreign intervention. Leftists were happy about Churchill’s and then Roosevelt’s intervention against the Axis. To make ‘anti-imperialism’ trump all other values in a mindless way leads to frankly absurd positions. I can’t tell you how annoyed I am by the fringe left adulation for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the grounds that he is ‘anti-imperialist,’ and with an assumption that he is somehow on the Left. As the pillar of a repressive Theocratic order that puts down workers, he is a man of the far Right, and that he doesn’t like the US and Western Europe doesn’t ennoble him.
The proposition that social problems can never be resolved by military force alone may be true. But there are some problems that can’t be solved unless there is a military intervention first, since its absence would allow the destruction of the progressive forces. Those arguing that “Libyans” should settle the issue themselves are willfully ignoring the overwhelming repressive advantage given Qaddafi by his jets, helicopter gunships, and tanks; the ‘Libyans’ were being crushed inexorably. Such crushing can be effective for decades thereafter.
Assuming that NATO’s UN-authorized mission in Libya really is limited (it is hoping for 90 days), and that a foreign military occupation is avoided, the intervention is probably a good thing on the whole, however distasteful it is to have Nicolas Sarkozy grandstanding. Of course he is not to be trusted by progressives, but he is to his dismay increasingly boxed in by international institutions, which limits the damage he could do as the bombing campaign comes to an end (Qaddafi only had 2000 tanks, many of them broken down, and it won’t be long before he has so few, and and the rebels have captured enough to level the playing field, that little further can be accomplished from the air).
Many are crying hypocrisy, citing other places an intervention could be staged or worrying that Libya sets a precedent. I don’t find those arguments persuasive. Military intervention is always selective, depending on a constellation of political will, military ability, international legitimacy and practical constraints. The humanitarian situation in Libya was fairly unique. You had a set of tank brigades willing to attack dissidents, and responsible for thousands of casualties and with the prospect of more thousands to come, where aerial intervention by the world community could make a quick and effective difference.
This situation did not obtain in the Sudan’s Darfur, where the terrain and the conflict were such that aerial intervention alone would have have been useless and only boots on the ground could have had a hope of being effective. But a whole US occupation of Iraq could not prevent Sunni-Shiite urban faction-fighting that killed tens of thousands, so even boots on the ground in Darfur’s vast expanse might have failed.
The other Arab Spring demonstrations are not comparable to Libya, because in none of them has the scale loss of life been replicated, nor has the role of armored brigades been as central, nor have the dissidents asked for intervention, nor has the Arab League. For the UN, out of the blue, to order the bombing of Deraa in Syria at the moment would accomplish nothing and would probably outrage all concerned. Bombing the tank brigades heading for Benghazi made all the difference.
That is, in Libya intervention was demanded by the people being massacred as well as by the regional powers, was authorized by the UNSC, and could practically attain its humanitarian aim of forestalling a massacre through aerial bombardment of murderous armored brigades. And, the intervention could be a limited one and still accomplish its goal.
I also don’t understand the worry about the setting of precedents. The UN Security Council is not a court, and does not function by precedent. It is a political body, and works by political will. Its members are not constrained to do elsewhere what they are doing in Libya unless they so please, and the veto of the five permanent members ensures that a resolution like 1973 will be rare. But if a precedent is indeed being set that if you rule a country and send tank brigades to murder large numbers of civilian dissidents, you will see your armor bombed to smithereens, I can’t see what is wrong with that.
Another argument is that the no-fly zone (and the no-drive zone) aimed at overthrowing Qaddafi not to protect his people from him but to open the way for US, British and French dominance of Libya’s oil wealth. This argument is bizarre. The US declined to do oil business with Libya in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, when it could have, because it had placed the country under boycott. It didn’twantaccess to that oil market, which was repeatedly proffered to Washington by Qaddafi then. After Qaddafi came back in from the cold in the late 1990s (for the European Union) and after 2003 (for the US), sanctions were lifted and Western oil companies flocked into the country. US companies werewell represented, along with BP and the Italian firm ENI. BP signed an expensive exploration contract with Qaddafi and cannot possibly have wanted its validity put into doubt by a revolution. There is no advantage to the oil sector of removing Qaddafi. Indeed, a new government may be more difficult to deal with and may not honor Qaddafi’s commitments. There is no prospect of Western companies being allowed to own Libyan petroleum fields, which were nationalized long ago. Finally, it is not always in the interests of Big Oil to have more petroleum on the market, since that reduces the price and, potentially, company profits. A war on Libya to get more and better contracts so as to lower the world price of petroleum makes no sense in a world where the bids were already being freely let, and where high prices were producing record profits. I haven’t seen the war-for-oil argument made for Libya in a manner that makes any sense at all.
I would like to urge the Left to learn to chew gum and walk at the same time. It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis, to an ethical progressive position that supports the ordinary folk in their travails in places like Libya. If we just don’t care if the people of Benghazi are subjected to murder and repression on a vast scale, we aren’t people of the Left. We should avoid making ‘foreign intervention’ an absolute taboo the way the Right makes abortion an absolute taboo if doing so makes us heartless (inflexible a priori positions often lead to heartlessness). It is now easy to forget that Winston Churchill held absolutely odious positions from a Left point of view and was an insufferable colonialist who opposed letting India go in 1947. His writings are full of racial stereotypes that are deeply offensive when read today. Some of his interventions were nevertheless noble and were almost universally supported by the Left of his day. The UN allies now rolling back Qaddafi are doing a good thing, whatever you think of some of their individual leaders.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates join us as President Obama faces criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for his decision to use force in Libya. What is the mission? How long will the U.S. military be involved in the conflict? Who's in charge? What happens if Khaddafy holds on to power and would that be a suitable outcome for the administration? What are the mission's goals and how does it end? Are we at war?
Also Sunday: Congress returns from recess next week and there will be plenty for them to work on. On Libya: Did President Obama overstep his constitutional authority by using military force in Libya without consulting Congress? Will Congress investigate? On the home front: Can Congress cut a deal to fund the government before the money runs out? The ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) joins us exclusively.
How has President Obama handled the crisis in the Middle East? Did the president make the case to the American people that intervention in Libya is worth the cost? How might the conflict in the Middle East affect the president's agenda? Our roundtable: The Washington Post's Bob Woodward; the BBC's Ted Koppel; senior fellow for the Center for a New American Security and author, Tom Ricks; and NBC News White House Correspondent, Savannah Guthrie.
Black-clad demonstrators throw paint bombs, light bulbs filled with ammonia
LONDON — A quarter-million mostly peaceful demonstrators marched through central London on Saturday against the toughest cuts to public spending since World War II, with some small breakaway groups smashing windows at banks and shops and spray painting logos on the walls.
Another group of black-clad protesters hurled paint bombs and ammonia-filled light bulbs at police.
Organizers of the March for the Alternative said people from across the country were peacefully joining in the demonstration, the biggest protest in London since a series of rallies against the Iraq war in 2003. Story: Violence erupts as British students protest fee hikes
Commander Bob Broadhurst of the Metropolitan Police confirmed that more than 250,000 people had marched peacefully, but said around 500 had caused trouble in London's main shopping streets.
He said nine people had been arrested, for public disorder and criminal damage. Police said 28 people had been injured during the demonstration, and seven were admitted to hospitals for a range of problems, including shortness of breath and a suspected hip fracture. Five police officers were also injured and one of those had to be treated in hospital for a groin injury.
Police said one group of a few hundred people broke away from the main march, scuffling with police officers and attempting to smash shop windows on two of London's main shopping streets. Others threw objects at the posh Ritz Hotel in nearby Piccadilly. Members of protest group UK Uncut later walked into the nearby luxury department store Fortnum and Mason and remained inside for a few hours. Police clashed with other demonstrators outside.
But the protests otherwise had a carnival feel. School teachers, nurses and students all marched through central London and rallied in Hyde Park, one of London's biggest public gardens, with banners, balloons and whistles. Bracing for big cuts Britain is facing 80 billion pounds ($130 billion) of public spending cuts from Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government as it struggles to get the country's large budget deficit under control. The government has already raised sales tax, but Britons are bracing for big cuts to public spending.
After the country spent billions bailing out indebted banks, and suffered a squeeze on tax revenue and an increase in welfare bills, Treasury chief George Osborne has staked the coalition government's future on tough economic remedies.
As many as half a million public sector jobs will be lost, about 18 billion ($28.5 billion) axed from welfare payments and the pension age raised to 66 by 2020, earlier than previously planned. Story: U.K. police under pressure after royal car attacked The TUC, the main umbrella body for British unions, says it believes the cuts will threaten the country's economic recovery, and has urged the government to create new taxes for banks and to close loopholes that allow some companies to pay less tax — an argument that chimes with many of the protesters.
"They shouldn't be taking money from public services. What have we done to deserve this?" said Alison Foster, a 53-year-old school teacher. "Yes, they are making vicious cuts. That's why I'm marching, to let them know this is wrong."
Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour Party, likened the march to the suffragette movement in Britain and the civil rights movement in America. "Our causes may be different but we come together to realize our voice. We stand on the shoulders of those who have marched and have struggled in the past," he told protesters at the rally.
The Metropolitan police have been criticized for adopting heavy-handed tactics when dealing with demonstrations in the past. In particular, they have been criticized for penning demonstrators up in a small area for several hours without allowing them to leave. Police have said the so-called "kettling" procedure will only be used as a last resort.
The TUC has called for a peaceful protest during which people walk along official routes that have already been cleared with police. But leaflets scattered around central London by other groups have asked demonstrators to leave the official route and stay in central London after the event officially ends in the afternoon.
In another incident away from the main march, a group burned a giant model of a Trojan horse made by art students and dragged into central London.
The students said the horse was a metaphor for deputy Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg. Clegg's party had promised not to raise tuition fees during their election campaign but abandoned that pledge when they formed a coalition government with the Conservative party.
Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images
A mass march in protest at government cuts sets off from Embankment on Saturday in London.
Demonstrators break windows of the Ritz Hotel, during a protest organized by the Trades Union Congress in central London on Saturday.
A massive rally over budget cuts has escalated into a violent scene in the streets of London, England. NBC's Rehema Ellis reports.
Former congresswoman was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1998
Jack Smith / AP file
Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale and his running mate, Geraldine Ferraro, wave as they leave an afternoon rally in Portland, Ore., in this Wednesday, Sept. 5, 1984 file photo.
Former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro announces that she will seek her party's nomination to challenge Republican Alphonse D'Amato for his U.S. Senate seat in New York, January 5, 1998.
updated 2 hours 34 minutes ago
Geraldine Ferraro, who in 1984 became the first woman vice presidential candidate on a major U.S. party ticket, died Saturday in Boston, a family spokeswoman said.
Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was being treated for blood cancer. She died just before 10 a.m. EST, said Amanda Fuchs Miller, a family friend who worked for Ferraro in her 1998 Senate bid and was acting as a spokeswoman for the family.
A three-term congresswoman from the New York City borough of Queens, Ferraro catapulted to national prominence in 1984 when she was chosen by presidential nominee Walter Mondale to join his ticket against incumbents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
In the end, Reagan won 49 of 50 states, the largest landslide since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first re-election over Alf Landon in 1936. But Ferraro had forever sealed her place as trailblazer for women in national politics, laying the path for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's historic presidential bid in 2008 and Republican John McCain's choice of a once obscure Alaska governor, Sarah Palin, as his running mate that year.
Mondale remembered his former running mate as "a remarkable woman and a dear human being." Palin praises Ferraro "She was a pioneer in our country for justice for women and a more open society. She broke a lot of molds and it's a better country for what she did," Mondale told The Associated Press.
Palin paid tribute to Ferraro on her Facebook page on Saturday.
"She broke one huge barrier and then went on to break many more," Palin wrote. "May her example of hard work and dedication to America continue to inspire all women."
Bush, Ferraro's vice-presidential rival in 1984, praised Ferraro for "the dignified and principled manner she blazed new trails for women in politics." He said that after the 1984 race, "Gerry and I became friends in time — a friendship marked by respect and affection."
The two famously sparred in a nationally televised debate that year where Ferraro accused Bush of a "patronizing attitude" toward her. And Bush's wife, Barbara, said Ferraro was a word that "rhymed with rich." Video: Geraldine Ferraro on MTP October 14, 1984 (on this page) 'America is the land where dreams can come true' Ferraro stepped into the national spotlight at the Democratic convention in 1984 after Mondale selected her as his running mate. Delegates in San Francisco erupted in cheers at the first line of her speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination.
"My name is Geraldine Ferraro," she declared. "I stand before you to proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us."
Her acceptance speech launched eight minutes of cheers, foot-stamping and tears.
Ferraro sometimes overshadowed former Vice President Mondale on the campaign trail, often drawing larger crowds and more media attention than the presidential candidate.
But controversy accompanied her acclaim. Frequent, vociferous protests of her favorable view of abortion rights marked the campaign.
Ferraro's run also was beset by ethical questions, first about her campaign finances and tax returns, then about the business dealings of her husband, John Zaccaro. Ferraro attributed much of the controversy to bias against Italian-Americans.
Mondale said he selected Ferraro as a bold stroke to counter his poor showing in polls against President Reagan and because he felt America lagged far behind other democracies in elevating women to top leadership roles.
"The time had come to eliminate the barriers to women of America and to reap the benefits of drawing talents from all Americans, including women," Mondale said. After the '84 campaign In the years after the race, Ferraro told interviewers that she would have not have accepted the nomination had she known how it would focus criticism on her family.
"You don't deliberately submit people you love to something like that," she told presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in an interview in Ladies Home Journal. "I don't think I'd run again for vice-president," she said, then paused, laughed and said, "Next time I'd run for president."
Zaccaro pleaded guilty in 1985 to a misdemeanor charge of scheming to defraud in connection with obtaining financing for the purchase of five apartment buildings. Two years later he was acquitted of trying to extort a bribe from a cable television company. Video: Ferraro passes away at age 75 (on this page) Ferraro's son, John Zaccaro Jr., was convicted in 1988 of selling cocaine to an undercover Vermont state trooper and served three months under house arrest.
Some observers said the legal troubles were a drag on Ferraro's later political ambitions, which included her unsuccessful bids for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in New York in 1992 and 1998.
Ferraro, a supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was back in the news in March 2008 when she stirred up a controversy by appearing to suggest that Sen. Barack Obama achieved his status in the presidential race only because he's black.
She later stepped down from an honorary post in the Clinton campaign, but insisted she meant no slight against Obama. From law to politics to CNN Ferraro received a law degree from Fordham University in 1960, the same year she married Zaccaro and became a full-time homemaker and mother. She said she kept her maiden name to honor her mother, a widow who had worked long hours as a seamstress.
After years in a private law practice, she took a job as an assistant Queens district attorney in 1974. She headed the office's special victims' bureau, which prosecuted sex crimes and the abuse of children and the elderly. In 1978, she won the first of three terms in Congress representing a working-class district of Queens.
After losing in 1984, she became a fellow of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University until an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1992.
She returned to the law after her 1992 Senate run, acting as an advocate for women raped during ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
Her advocacy work and support of President Bill Clinton won her the position of ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, where she served in 1994 and 1995.
She co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire," in 1996 and 1997 but left to take on Chuck Schumer, then a little-known Brooklyn congressman, in the 1998 Democratic Senate primary in New York. She placed a distant second, declaring her political career finished after she took 26 percent of the vote to Schumer's 51 percent.
In June 1999, she announced that she was joining a Washington, D.C., area public relations firm to head a group advising clients on women's issues.
Ferraro revealed two years later that she had been diagnosed with blood cancer.
She discussed blood cancer research before a Senate panel that month and said she hoped to live long enough "to attend the inauguration of the first woman president of the United States."
Geraldine Ferraro, who in 1984 became the first woman to run for vice president on a major party ticket, only to lose in a landslide, died Saturday. She was 75.
Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was being treated for blood cancer. She died just before 10 a.m., said Amanda Fuchs Miller, a family friend who worked for Ferraro in her 1998 Senate bid and was acting as a spokeswoman for the family.
An obscure Queens congresswoman, Ferraro catapulted to national prominence at the 1984 Democratic convention when she was chosen by presidential nominee Walter Mondale to join his ticket against incumbents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
Delegates in San Francisco erupted in cheers at the first line of her speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination.
"My name is Geraldine Ferraro," she declared. "I stand before you to proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us." 'Geraldine Ferraro did them all' Her acceptance speech launched eight minutes of cheers, foot-stamping and tears.
Ferraro sometimes overshadowed Mondale on the campaign trail, often drawing larger crowds and more media attention than the presidential candidate.
"No one asks anymore if women can raise the money, if women can take the heat, if women have the stamina for the toughest political campaigns in this country," Judy Goldsmith, then-president of the National Organization for Women told People Magazine in December, 1984. "Geraldine Ferraro did them all."
But controversy accompanied her acclaim. Frequent, vociferous protests of her favorable view of abortion rights marked the campaign.
Ferraro's run also was beset by ethical questions, first about her campaign finances and tax returns, then about the business dealings of her husband, John Zaccaro. Ferraro attributed much of the controversy to bias against Italian-Americans.
Mondale said he selected Ferraro as a bold stroke to counter his poor showing in polls against President Reagan and because he felt America lagged far behind other democracies in elevating women to top leadership roles.
"The time had come to eliminate the barriers to women of America and to reap the benefits of drawing talents from all Americans, including women," Mondale said. After the '84 campaign In the end, Reagan won 49 of the 50 states, the largest landslide since Franklin D. Roosevelt's first re-election, in 1936 over Alf Landon.
In the years after the race, Ferraro told interviewers that she would have not have accepted the nomination had she known how it would focus criticism on her family.
"You don't deliberately submit people you love to something like that," she told presidential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in an interview in Ladies Home Journal. "I don't think I'd run again for vice-president," she said, then paused, laughed and said, "Next time I'd run for president."
Zaccaro pleaded guilty in 1985 to a misdemeanor charge of scheming to defraud in connection with obtaining financing for the purchase of five apartment buildings. Two years later he was acquitted of trying to extort a bribe from a cable television company.
Ferraro's son, John Zaccaro Jr., was convicted in 1988 of selling cocaine to an undercover Vermont state trooper and served three months under house arrest.
Some observers said the legal troubles were a drag on Ferraro's later political ambitions, which included her unsuccessful bids for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in New York in 1992 and 1998.
Ferraro, a supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was back in the news in March 2008 when she stirred up a controversy by appearing to suggest that Sen. Barack Obama achieved his status in the presidential race only because he's black.
She later stepped down from an honorary post in the Clinton campaign, but insisted she meant no slight against Obama. From law to politics to CNN Ferraro received a law degree from Fordham University in 1960, the same year she married Zaccaro and became a full-time homemaker and mother. She said she kept her maiden name to honor her mother, a widow who had worked long hours as a seamstress.
After years in a private law practice, she took a job as an assistant Queens district attorney in 1974. She headed the office's special victims' bureau, which prosecuted sex crimes and the abuse of children and the elderly. In 1978, she won the first of three terms in Congress representing a blue-collar district of Queens.
After losing in 1984, she became a fellow of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University until an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1992.
She returned to the law after her 1992 Senate run, acting as an advocate for women raped during ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
Her advocacy work and support of President Bill Clinton won her the position of ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, where she served in 1994 and 1995.
She co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire," in 1996 and 1997 but left to take on Chuck Schumer, then a little-known Brooklyn congressman, in the 1998 Democratic Senate primary. She placed a distant second, declaring her political career finished after she took 26 percent of the vote to Schumer's 51 percent.
In June 1999, she announced that she was joining a Washington, D.C., area public relations firm to head a group advising clients on women's issues.
Ferraro revealed two years later that she had been diagnosed with blood cancer. She discussed blood cancer research before a Senate panel that month and said she hoped to live long enough "to attend the inauguration of the first woman president of the United States."
Geraldine Ferraro has passed away at the age of 75. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell takes a look back at an incredible life.
Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to be on a major party’s ticket for Vice President appeared on Meet The Press three times throughout her career. This is from her most memorable appearance when she was running for Vice President in 1984. Watch as she discusses the drawbacks and benefits of being a woman in politics.
Morning Gloria —Womb transplants could be available to infertile or childless women as early as next year, leading researchers say. The procedure is designed to help women whose wombs were damaged by disease or defect, and the transplanted wombs would come from either living or dead donors. Donors and recipients would have to be a close tissue match in order to prevent the recipient's body from rejecting the organ, and the recipient would not be able to conceive or give birth naturally, as the transplanted tissue could not hold up to the strain.
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