Fifty years after its introduction, the Equal Rights Amendment (“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex”) finally met congressional approval in 1972 and was sent to the states for ratification. The amendment set off a furious debate, especially in the South and Midwest, and fell short of ratification. Following are four of the voices in that debate.

Phyllis Schlafly

Lawyer and political activist Phyllis Schlafly was the most prominent opponent of the ERA. Her organization, STOP ERA, campaigned against the amendment in critical states and helped to halt ratification.

Women’s magazines, the women’s pages of newspapers, and television and radio talk shows have been filled for months with a strident advocacy of the “rights” of women to be treated on an equal basis with men in all walks of life. But what about the rights of the woman who doesn’t want to compete on an equal basis with men? Does she have the right to be treated as a woman — by her family, by society, and by the law? …

The laws of every one of our 50 states now guarantee the right to be a woman — protected and provided for in her career as a woman, wife, and mother. The proposed Equal Rights Amendment will wipe out all our laws which — through rights, benefits, and exemptions — guarantee this right to be a woman. … Is this what American women want? Is this what American men want?

The laws of every one of the 50 states now require the husband to support his wife and children — and to provide a home for them to live in. In other words, the law protects a woman’s right to be a full-time wife and mother, her right not to take a job outside the home, her right to care for her own baby in her own home while being financially supported by her husband. …

There are two very different types of women lobbying for the Equal Rights Amendment. One group is the women’s liberationists. Their motive is totally radical. They hate men, marriage, and children. They are out to destroy morality and the family. … There is another type of woman supporting the Equal Rights Amendment from the most sincere motives. It is easy to see why the business and professional women are supporting the Equal Rights Amendment — many of them have felt the keen edge of discrimination in their employment.

Source: From The Phyllis Schlafly Report, November 1972. Reprinted by permission.

Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell was a fundamentalist Baptist preacher in Virginia, a television evangelist, and the founder of the political lobbying organization known as the Moral Majority.

I believe that at the foundation of the women’s liberation movement there is a minority core of women who were once bored with life, whose real problems are spiritual problems. Many women have never accepted their God-given roles. … God Almighty created men and women biologically different and with differing needs and roles. He made men and women to complement each other and to love each other. … Women who work should be respected and accorded dignity and equal rewards for equal work. But this is not what the present feminist movement and equal rights movement are all about.

The Equal Rights Amendment is a delusion. I believe that women deserve more than equal rights. And, in families and in nations where the Bible is believed, Christian women are honored above men. Only in places where the Bible is believed and practiced do women receive more than equal rights. Men and women have differing strengths. The Equal Rights Amendment can never do for women what needs to be done for them. Women need to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and be under His Lordship. They need a man who knows Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior, and they need to be part of a home where their husband is a godly leader and where there is a Christian family. …

ERA is not merely a political issue, but a moral issue as well. A definite violation of holy Scripture, ERA defies the mandate that “the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church” (Ep. 5:23). In 1 Peter 3:7 we read that husbands are to give their wives honor as unto the weaker vessel, that they are both heirs together of the grace of life. Because a woman is weaker does not mean that she is less important.

Source: Excerpt from Listen America! by Jerry Falwell, copyright © 1980 by Jerry Falwell. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Random House LLC for permission.

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz was a distinguished educator and the first black woman to head the National Education Association and the U.S. Women’s Bureau. At the time she made this statement at state legislative hearings on the ERA in 1977, she was assistant state superintendent for public instruction in North Carolina.

A short time ago I had the misfortune to break my foot. … The pain … did not hurt me as much as when I went into the emergency room and the young woman upon asking me my name, the nature of my ailment, then asked me for my husband’s social security number and his hospitalization number. I asked her what did that have to do with my emergency.

And she said, “We have to be sure of who is going to pay your bill.” I said, “Suppose I’m not married, then.” And she said, “Then give me your father’s name.” I did not go through that twenty years ago when I was denied the use of that emergency room because of my color.

I went through that because there is an underlying assumption that all women in our society are protected, dependent, cared for by somebody who’s got a social security number and hospitalization insurance. Never once did she assume I might be a woman who might be caring for my husband, instead of him by me, because of some illness. She did not take into account the fact that one out of almost eight women heading families in poverty today [is] in the same condition as men in families and poverty. …

My greater concern is that so many women today … oppose the passage of the ERA very sincerely and … tell you without batting an eye, “I don’t want to see women treated that way.” And I speak up, “What way is that?” … Women themselves have been a bit misguided. We have mistaken present practice for law, and women have … assumed too many times that their present condition cannot change. The rate of divorce, the rate of desertion, the rate of separation, and the death rate of male supporters is enough for us to say: “Let us remove all legal barriers to women and girls making their choices — this state cannot afford it.”

Source: William A. Link and Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, eds., The South in the History of the Nation (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999), 295–296.

Caroline Bird

Caroline Bird was the lead author of What Women Want, a report produced by women’s rights advocates following the 1977 National Women’s Conference, held in Houston, Texas.

The Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, stated that “all Men are created equal” and that governments derive their powers “from the Consent of the Governed.” Women were not included in either concept. The original American Constitution of 1787 was founded on English common law, which did not recognize women as citizens or as individuals with legal rights. A woman was expected to obey her husband or nearest male kin, and if she was married her person and her property were owned by her husband. …

It has been argued that the ERA is not necessary because the Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War, guarantees that no state shall deny to “any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” …

Aside from the fact that women have been subjected to varying, inconsistent, and often unfavorable decisions under the Fourteenth Amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment is a more immediate and effective remedy to sex discrimination in Federal and State laws than case-by-case interpretation under the Fourteenth Amendment could ever be.

Source: Caroline Bird, What Women Want (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), 120–121.