Louise McIntosh Slaughter (b. August 14, 1929) is a politician from the U.S. state of New York, currently representing the state's 28th Congressional district (map) in the U.S. House.
Slaughter maintains an extensive campaign (www.votelouise.com) and government (www.louise.house.gov) website.
Slaughter was born in Harlan County, Kentucky and she graduated from the University of Kentucky. She trained as a microbiologist and holds a Master's Degree in Public Health. Slaughter is a descendant of Daniel Boone and a distant cousin of Ike Skelton. She moved to the Rochester, New York area with her husband and raised three daughters there.
After her children were older, Slaughter worked as a staffer for Mario Cuomo in western New York. She was elected to the New York General Assembly in 1982 as a Democrat. She won a Rochester-based seat in the House of Representatives in 1986, defeating freshman incumbent Fred Eckert, against whom she had briefly considered running in 1984, after the retirement of longtime Republican Congressman Barber Conable.
Slaughter's district was radically altered in redistricting in 2002, so that it now stretches from Rochester to Buffalo, New York. She narrowly avoided a primary battle against fellow Democratic congressman John LaFalce when LaFalce retired. She is considered a liberal Democrat and is a particularly staunch supporter of abortion rights, as Co-Chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, and women's health issues. She is the top-ranking Democrat on the powerful House Rules Committee, which controls the process by which bills are amended on the House floor. She was one of the earliest sponsors of legislation in the House to protect genetic privacy.
Slaughter is a frequent poster to the Daily Kos, a left-oriented blog.