Think women have equal rights in America? Think again! The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was blocked into oblivion by Republicans.

How many Americans living today have ever heard of the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? If you haven’t, you are not alone. How many women just assume that they have equal rights in America? The U.S. Constitution became effective on March 4, 1789. 131 years later, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on August 18, 1920, giving women the right to vote, after a hundred years of protest. Amazingly, a vocal minority of women were against women voting, much like millions of women are apparently against women’s rights today, when they vote Republican. In 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed in Congress, and defeated. It finally passed Congress 49 years later, in 1972, by the required two-thirds of House and Senate votes, and was sent to the states, allowing them seven years to ratify it. This simple 58-word Amendment read: Section 1: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification. Seems reasonable enough, right? It takes three quarters of states (38 states) to ratify an Amendment to the Constitution. Congress thought it would be a slam dunk, but they thought wrong. They even extended the deadline to 1982. By 1982, only 35 states had ratified it, and five of them tried to rescind their votes. The 38th state, Virginia, agreed to ratify it in 2020, 38 years after the deadline. A federal District Court judge ruled in 2020 that it was too late, based on the fact that Congress had imposed the 1982 deadline. He did not rule on “take-backs” for the five states that changed their minds. In 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives barely passed a Joint Resolution to eliminate the deadline and to make the Equal Rights Amendment part of the U.S. Constitution. The Senate still has not passed that resolution, not that it would do any good. Here are the 12 states that never voted to ratify the E.R.A.: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. No surprise there. How many of them would ratify it today? Here are the five states that tried to rescind their votes to ratify: Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Tennessee. How many of these do you think would vote to ratify the E.R.A. today? About 20 states have some kind of Equal Rights Amendment in their state constitutions. For example, in 1972 Texas amended Article One Section Three of their constitution, adding these words: “Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed, or national origin. This amendment is self-operative.” How’s that working out for women in Texas? Oh, wait. Texas men aren’t allowed to get abortions, either, so there’s your equality, gals. If we ever again have a House and Senate where two thirds of members are reasonable, maybe we can try again on the Equal Rights Amendment. This time, if they must impose a deadline for ratification, it should be 100 years. We can get strong Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in 2024, especially if some Republican women wake up. And we can certainly get two thirds by 2026 or 2028. Then if Red states block the E.R.A. again, that could end the G.O.P. for good.