The Equal Rights Amendment won congressional approval in 1972 and set off a furious debate when it was sent to the states for ratification. Lawyer and political activist Phyllis Schlafly was the most prominent opponent of the ERA; Elizabeth Duncan Koontz was a distinguished educator and the first black woman to head the National Education Association.

Phyllis Schlafly: 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? …

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.

Elizabeth Duncan Koontz: 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.

Sources : The Phyllis Schlafly Report, November 1972, 1–4. Reprinted by permission. William A. Link and Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, eds., The South in the History of the Nation (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999), 295–296.