The Future of the Equal Rights Amendment

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For instance, in Missouri, abortion opponents have organized an extensive lobbying effort against the ERA, claiming that its passage would make abortion more accessible in the state. And in 1999, the national conservative women's organization Concerned Women for America weighed in on the issue as well. "They sent out a letter accross the country touting the group's opposition to passage of ERA as a fund-raising strategy," Francis said.

Still, the amendment was reintroduced into the Missouri General Assembly at the start of the 2000 session, and Missouri lobbyist Mary Mosley says the measure could finally pass this time around. According to the National Women's Party, some of the biggest pro-ERA campaigns are being launched in Virginia and Florida, and groups have organized in Arizona, North Carolina, and Arkansas.

The key to the initiative's success this time around, says Francis, is to reach young women and make them aware of the ERA's viability and relevance in their lives. To that end, her organization has produced a new video, The Equal Rights Amendment: Unfinished Business for the Constitution, that they've been distributing to schools and other organizations.

"What this current strategy initiative is stirring up is a renewed look at the ERA, and at the fact that as we enter the new millennium we still have a constitution that does not guarantee equal rights to all American citizens on the basis of sex," Francis says. "I'm confident that the ERA is going to be ratified sometime in the future, but in order to get there, we need to make more people aware of what's happening, and to turn more young women on to the issue."

That may be happening already. In Jane (Oct. 1999), 29-year-old essayist Jennifer Baumgardner picks up the torch that was nearly snuffed out back in 1982: "I was an adult before I realized that for all of the accoutrements of liberation--Ms. magazine, birth control, female doctors, astronaut Sally Ride, and, bringing us back to the present, GIRLS KICK ASS! panties—women have never achieved formal equality with men," she writes. "Simply put: We might feel equal, but we aren't, in the eyes of the law."

Fiery rhetoric is nice. But what about my niece? Will she be talking about the ERA on the playground next year?

Only time will tell, but odds are she's going to hear a lot more about it in the months ahead.

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