Congress sent ERA out to the states on March 22, 1972, with a seven-year ratification deadline. Within twelve months, 30 states had ratified ERA. But a small group of women in 1972, under the name "Stop ERA," and led by Phyllis Schlafly, took on what seemed to be an impossible task, to inform the American people and rally American women to stand up for their rights . . . as women. Over the next six years, only five more states ratified ERA, but five of the 30 states rescinded their previous ratifications of ERA, leaving a net score of zero for six years of lobbying for ERA.
The Equal Rights Amendment was presented to the American public as something that would benefit women, "put women in the U.S. Constitution," and lift women out of their so-called "second-class citizenship." However, in thousands of debates, the ERA advocates were unable to show any way that ERA would benefit women or end any discrimination against them. Most women knew they already benefited by every constitutional right that men did. The U.S. Constitution is already sex-neutral as written by our founders; men and women already have all of the rights enumerated in this document.
The last state to ratify ERA before the seven-year deadline expired was Indiana in January 1977. Despite the "unconstitutional exercise of congressional authority" (the words of US District Judge Marion Callister invalidating the extension) Congress pushed back the ratification deadline by 3 years and 8 days in 1978. It died a second death in 1982.
For the next forty years, despite dozens and dozens of votes in legislatures, committees, referenda, and Congress, the pro-ERA forces were completely unsuccessful. That is until they conjured up a devious and unconstitutional plan called the "Three State" strategy to push additional states to ratify despite it being well passed its expiration date. Nevada (2017), Illinois (2018) and Virginia (2020) ratified the dead amendment and then sued the Archivist of the United States to compel certification of the ERA. However, in 2021, a US District judge dismissed the lawsuit stating that not only did the states lack standing to sue, but "even if plaintiffs had standing, Congress set deadlines for ratifying the ERA that expired long ago."
Simply put, the ERA is dead and rightly so. It's clear the ERA is bad for women. It ERAses women at the expense of creating "equality". The rights of American women are protected not only by the 14th Amendment's equal protection guarantee but by Title IX, the Equal Opportunity Act of 1963, the Equal Employment Opportunity Discrimination Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Equal Pay Act. But if ERA were to be adopted, women would lose many of the rights guaranteed by these laws. Men identifying as women would be legally allowed to usurp women's rights. They would gain access to women's sports teams, nursing rooms, prisons, and women's domestic violence shelters and put women's privacy and safety in jeopardy. Young women would lose the ability to choose single-sex education. ERA would prohibit insurance companies from charging lower rates for women, even though actuarial data clearly show that women, as a group, are entitled to lower rates. It would eliminate workplace practices that accommodate pregnant women and undo state labor laws that protect women who do heavy, manual work.
Phyllis Schlafly and the women of the late 20th Century stood up for their rights as women and rejected the Equal Rights Amendment. They did not back down from the feminists, the media, Hollywood, and almost every federal politician of the 1970s and 1980s. In today's climate, when many on the left have trouble even defining the words "women" and "sex", American women are ready to wage this battle again. We are not and have never been victims, and the liberal feminists do not speak for all women. We at Eagle Forum know that the claim that American women are downtrodden and unfairly treated is the fraud of this century as well. | |
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