ERA Backers Stage Rally, Launch Ratification Drive

Exactly six years after the equal rights amendment died a lingering death, leaders of the National Organization for Women and their allies marked its passing Thursday with a rally looking toward a rebirth in the post-Reagan era.

Several hundred enthusiastic supporters sang folk songs and waved green and white “ERA YES” placards on the West Front of the Capitol to kick off a new drive starting in 1989 to “put women in the Constitution.”

The biggest applause came when NOW President Molly Yard shouted that success was in sight because: “We are at the end of an era--the Reagan era.”

Liberal proponents contend that women now have more visible political clout and the national climate is more favorable than it was a decade ago when the ERA fell three states short of ratification as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution.

Opponents Vow Action

At the same time, however, conservative opponents who blocked the last feminist drive for ERA vowed that they would take up battle stations again to prevent it from becoming the law of the land.

“The ERA is dead,” said Hallie Zimmerman, a spokesman at the Washington office of the Eagle Forum, an organization headed by Phyllis Schlafly, a leader of the Republican right. “These rallies are nothing but fund-raisers for NOW.”

A spokesman at the Washington headquarters of Moral Majority, the organization run by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, added: “If it’s renewed, we’ll definitely be in the battle again.” Rebecca Hagelin, speaking for Concerned Women for America, said: “Attempting to revive the ERA is like kicking a dead dog . . . We’re not alarmed but we will fight the ERA everywhere and every time it’s introduced. It would be a disaster for the country.”

Few issues in American political life have generated more emotion over as long a period as the three-sentence amendment that passed the House in 1971 by a vote of 354 to 24 and sailed through the Senate by a vote of 84 to 8 the following year.

Contents of Amendment

The key section says: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any any state on account of sex.” Another sentence says that Congress can enforce it with appropriate legislation and a third provides that the amendment shall take effect two years after it is ratified.

Ratification by three-fourths of the 50 states--a total of 38--proved to be an impossible obstacle, however, and ERA backers were stalled at 35 when the legislative clock finally ran out on June 30, 1982.

Reagan personally took part in a successful drive to stop the reintroduction of the ERA in the House in 1983, when he telephoned members of Congress during the vote and the amendment fell six votes short of the necessary two-thirds majority, according to Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae).

Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), the only senator to show up at the rally, said that the ERA could pass Congress with a two-thirds majority but now seems likely to be stymied again by failure to get the endorsement of 38 state legislatures.

See Changing Times

Despite the long odds, however, experienced feminists said that the times have changed since the ERA went down to defeat.

They cited the much-discussed “gender gap,” polls which show that women favor Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis over his all but certain Republican opponent, Vice President George Bush, by a margin of 25 to 30 percentage points.

Another difference is the changing make-up of the work force. Women comprised about 30% of civilian employment in the 1950s but that percentage has climbed steadily to 45% in 1987. More than a third of them have children under 18 years old and 80% earn less than $20,000 a year, federal statistics show.

As these women face growing economic problems, they look to federal and state policy-makers for help in meeting their needs, such as child care, the pro-ERA forces contend.

At the rally, NOW leaders took heart when New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who has been chosen as the Republican keynote speaker, sent a message in favor of ERA.