Not Too Late to Advocate for the ERA

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” For reasons beyond my understanding, the state of Illinois has never been able to ratify these 24 simple words. If Illinois does ratify the ERA, it will be 35 years late.

This Monday, saying “Better late than Never” and hoping that Illinois would finally get it right, I got on the El Monday, May 7^th to attend the Hearing of the human rights committee of the Illinois House on SJRCA4.

The Illinois Senate had passed SJRCA4, the bill that would have Illinois ratify the federal ERA. An ERA for the state of Illinois has been part of the state constitution since 1970. The bill is now before the House. I needed to witness the state of Illinois making history at long last. After all, Abigail Adams had beseeched her husband John Adams to “remember the ladies” in a letter to him on March 31, 1776. They didn’t listen to her and women have been omitted from the Constitution ever since. It was about time.

What I witnessed, however, was probably not Illinois making history but rather reliving it. The room of viewers was packed predominantly with proponents of the ERA. Four panels of witnesses – twenty altogether – had the opportunity to tell the members of the House human rights committee what their opinions were regarding the ERA and about their life experiences that pointed to its necessity. Sixteen people testified in favor and four testified against it.

The arguments were the same as they had been in the 1970’s. Rep. Lou Lang, chief sponsor of the bill, started off presenting cogent arguments. The state and federal government needed to ratify the ERA to protect women’s rights. At present, the only right for women delineated in the Constitution is the right to vote. Laws passed which give equal rights to both sexes can be repealed at any time. The opposition gave the same old arguments: that the ERA would lead to more abortions, unisex bathrooms, and a groundswell of boys demanding to play on girls’ high school LaCrosse teams. The ERA states nothing about any of those issues.

After each panel, the House members were able to ask the panelists questions. One house member Mary Flowers asked the same questions to each panel member after a tirade about how the ERA would not specifically protect women of color. Each panel member explained how it would protect all American women but wouldn’t explicitly protect women of color from racist discrimination. The bill is about sex, not race. The vociferousness with which Ms. Flowers presented her arguments suggested to me that some behind the scenes horse trading to which the public was not privy was most likely going on. The failure of the Illinois House to make some bargain was what doomed the ERA to failure in Illinois in the 1970’s.

 I hope that I wasn’t seeing Illinois history repeat itself. At this writing, a hearing in Springfield in the Illinois House is in process. There’s still time to call your representatives and tell them to vote YES. All of us American women – white, black, Asian, Latina, native American, pink, green, or whatever – deserve better. It’s about time.