Bella Abzug at International Women’s Year conference

Bella Abzug at International Women’s Year conference, Catching the Wave. Lane, Bettye, 1930-2012

International Women’s Year (IWY) became the feminists’ plan to win ratification in the remaining states. Bella Abzug was then a Member of Congress, and she got Congress to appropriate $5 million for a tax-funded IWY convention in Houston in November 1977.

The International Women’s Year convention opened in Houston, featuring every feminist you ever heard of; 3,000 members of the media were on hand to give them total press and television coverage.

But all that media coverage exposed to the American people the real goals of the feminists and the radical effects of ERA: taxpayer funding of abortions and the entire gay rights agenda. ERAers argue that since abortion happens only to women, it is sex discrimination to deny taxpayer funding for abortions. And, since the word used in ERA is “sex,” not women, ERA would require us to grant same-sex marriage licenses. The International Women’s Year conference in Houston proved that ERA’s real agenda is taxpayer-funded abortions and special gay rights.

A couple of months later, a reporter asked the Governor of Missouri, “Governor, are you for ERA?” He replied, “Do you mean the old ERA or the new ERA? I was for equal pay for equal work, but after those women went down to Houston and got tangled up with the abortionists and the lesbians, I can tell you ERA will never pass in the Show Me State.”

When the feminists realized time was running out and they could not win 38 states by the seven-year deadline, they ran for help to President Carter who, with Congress, gave them a crooked 3-year time extension. — March 2007 Phyllis Schlafly Report