Yesterday I met Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, and she’s a real breath of fresh air. I can’t remember the last time I so enjoyed meeting a public figure. (I’ll give her the ultimate compliment: I’d totally hang with her.)

Anyway, she’s in town to do some P.R. on behalf of Alan Sandals, who’s running for the Democratic Senate nomination against anti-choice candidate Bob Casey. (In a controversial move, NOW endorsed Sandals a few weeks ago.)

We started off talking about the Supreme Court nominations. Gandy said when John Roberts was nominated, only NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation were willing to support a filibuster early on. Other groups thought it would label them as “too kneejerk.”

“It was so frustrating,” she said. “Because if you wait until after the hearings, how do you then get public support? It’s too late.”

By the time Alito was nominated, she said, groups came out against him early on - “but were saying, ‘Don’t say filibuster.’ ”

“You see how well that worked out,” she said. (Those of you who are regular readers already know how I feel about the dumb tactics used by NARAL and other groups in the Alito fight.)

Anyway, back to the Pennsylvania Senate race. “We looked at the candidates - Alan was the the most articulate on women’s rights issues, and had positions most clearly different from Rick Santorum and Bob Casey,” she said.

What about Pennachio’s contention that Sandals made a deal with NOW on parental notification to get their endorsement? Sandals said that simply wasn’t true: “As I learned more, the more I saw my current position is the correct position. Maybe Chuck should change his mind, too.” (FYI - Here’s the ACLU statement on parental permission.)

We talked some more about this. “Chuck Pennachio’s position on this is really wrong,” Gandy said.

“He’s used the line about ‘your teenage daughter can’t get her ears pierced without your permission, but she can have an abortion,’” I said.

She grimaced. “That’s a rightwing talking point.”

“Yeah, but to a lot of people, it sounds reasonable,” I said. “That’s why I’d like you to respond to it.”

So she told me the grusome tale of Spring Adams, an Idaho 13-year-old who was raped and impregnated by her father in 1989. Because she had to have parental permission to get an abortion, she told her mother, who confronted the father. Her father killed her, her mother and himself with a shotgun.

“All the studies show that most teenagers do tell their parents when they’re pregnant,” Gandy said. “But not everyone has a family where they can talk to their parents, and some of them have good reason to be afraid. That’s why parental notification is just not good law.”

She said as much when she was invited onto a Christian talk radio station to talk about abortion. “I told the host, ‘There are children who don’t have parents like us, in situations simply unimaginable to your listeners,’ ” she said.

Gandy said the South Dakota abortion ban has been “a real wakeup call” to women. “I think a lot of people convinced themselves they’d never really overturn Roe v. Wade, but they see now it’s going to happen,” she said.

I told her I’m probably one of those people - I simply can’t see them giving up their biggest cash cow and recruiting poster, but that I do see them picking off abortion rights state by state. “If they do overturn it, it’ll be because they were backed into a corner,” I said.

She disagreed. “They have five anti-abortion Catholics on the [Supreme] Court now, and at some point, that bomb’s gonna go off,” she said. She predicts the White House will apply pressure to keep them from ruling on abortion rights before the Congressional midterms, but after that, they’ll have no reason to delay.

Well, time will tell. In the meantime, she says, the federal RICO injunction used until now to prevent abortion clinic blockades will be vacated back to the 7th Circuit. The “latest version” of Operation Rescue - “whatever they’re calling themselves these days” - have called for a siege at the end of July against the lone abortion clinic in Jackson, Mississippi.

There simply aren’t enough doctors who know how to perform abortions, she said. She described one doctor who flies to five clinics in three different states, and points out the pressure on those who perform abortions is “tremendous.”

She said she talked to Susan Hill, the administrator of Jackson clinic, who told her she met some young female network news producers (presumably informed) who, after the South Dakota law was passed, exclaimed they “never thought this could happen.”

“I thought, ‘Hey, why haven’t you been paying attention?’ But at least it’s getting women mobilized. They’re beginning to see they can’t take things for granted anymore.”

Amen to that.

(Note: I’d like to point out one of the things I’ve always liked about NOW is, they don’t ever forget poor women. So if you want to give them some money, click here.