Katherine Spillar

Katherine Spillar is the Executive Vice President of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) and the Feminist Majority, national organizations working for women’s equality, empowerment and non-violence.

Spillar has been a national leader in the struggle to counter the effects of extremist anti-abortion groups that target women’s reproductive health clinics and to bring extremists to justice. She has directed the FMF’s research and public education activities, law enforcement relations, as well as grassroots organizing in some 26 states to keep clinics open in the face of extremist violence. Spillar is an expert on anti-abortion terrorism. She played an instrumental role in the FMF’s landmark 1994 Supreme Court case upholding the use of buffer zones to protect clinics, Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, and continues to oversee the Foundation’s litigation efforts to stop violent extremists.

In 2005, Spillar was named Executive Editor of Ms. magazine. Under her oversight, Ms. has increased its investigative reporting, exposing sweatshops, forced prostitution and forced abortions in the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, and uncovering the connections between abortion Dr. George Tiller’s convicted murderer, Scott Roeder, and anti-abortion extremists who promote violence.