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BY ELEANOR SMEAL and KATHY SPILLAR | In Women’s History Month 2021, we celebrated extraordinary legislative victories for women’s rights—and, at the same time, suffered a profound tragedy.
On March 17, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution to abolish the time limit on equality, clearing the way for the Equal Rights Amendment to join the document where it belongs: the U.S. Constitution. Some 49 years earlier, when the ERA passed both the House and the Senate, a seven-year timeline for ratification was inserted into the amendment’s preamble. It was a maneuver by ERA opponents to keep out of the Constitution the simple declaration: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged … on account of sex.”
In her speech on the floor of the House urging the resolution’s passage, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- Calif.) took on the opponents of equality while reminding everyone why the ERA must be ratified:
“There are some who say the Equal Rights Amendment is not needed. To them, I quote the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who said, ‘Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It does not.’” (To read the full article, click here.)
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