With the massive assault on women’s rights being waged by Republicans in the Congress and in the Republican state governorships and legislatures and on conservative talk radio, one would think that the Republican Party has always been this way.
But actually, just the opposite is true!
It was a Republican and a woman, Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who sponsored the woman suffrage amendment, which became the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920.
It was a vast majority of Republicans in Congress who promoted the proposed Equal Rights Amendment , along with the vast majority of Democrats, when it passed in 1972 and went to the states.
It was President Richard Nixon who gave his strong endorsement to the ERA after its passage in 1972.
It was President Gerald Ford who campaigned for the ERA when he became President in 1974.
It was First Lady Betty Ford who not only campaigned for the ERA, but also supported other feminist causes and the reproductive rights of women, despite conservative criticism.
When one particularly looks at the contributions of Gerald and Betty Ford to the advancement of women’s rights, there has to be nostalgia for the “Good Old Days”!
But ironically, supposedly, as time passes, things get better, right?
But in the case of women’s rights and the Republican Party, the situation is the reverse: the past is far more advanced than the present.
But Republicans will pay the price this fall, when millions of self respecting women will march to the polls, ignore even their “religious” and “good Christian” husbands who want to keep them subservient, and will vote out the Republicans who are taking away the rights of women, and vote in more women and more men who believe in true equality of the genders!