WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last Friday, West Virginia voted to rescind the state’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment on a voice vote, without debate, with all 23 Senate Republicans sponsoring the measure. It took all of 75 seconds for the Republican West Virginia Senate to make clear its intent—undermining women’s equality and looking for more ways to take away women’s rights.
These efforts have no Constitutional standing, as states can’t take ratification back. But that doesn’t matter to West Virginia Republicans, who vote again and again to treat women as second-class citizens when it comes to rolling back abortion rights, pay equity, gender equality, and structural racism.
NOW members in every state share West Virginia’s outrage at this latest example of misogynist politics on the rise, and we won’t sit idly by as other states attempt to do the same. We are pressuring the U.S. Senate to remove the arbitrary deadline for ERA ratification, and we are organizing our grassroots to defeat state lawmakers who stand in the way of equality for women.
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The National Organization for Women (NOW) is the nation’s leading membership-based advocacy group dedicated to defending women’s rights, advancing equality and combating injustice in all aspects of social, political and economic life. Through educating, mobilizing, and convening a vast network of grassroots activists across the country, NOW advocates for national, state and local policies that promote an anti-racist and intersectional feminist agenda. Since its founding in 1966, NOW has been on the frontlines of nearly every major advancement for women’s rights and continues to champion progressive values today. More about NOW’s efforts and resources is available at NOW.org.