The powerful rightness for Illinois of the Equal Rights Amendment

My state representative, Peter Breen, is obsessed over abortion. He tends to see every issue of women’s rights and advancement from the prism of interference with a woman’s reproductive freedom.

Consider Breen’s “nay” vote on Wednesday that failed to prevent Illinois from becoming the 37th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, passed by Congress in 1972, and now needing just one more state to become enshrined in the U. S. Constitution.

That document established America as a patriarchy, relegating women to little more than chattel for men who had exclusive control over voting, public office and property, and quite importantly, their own bodies. The arc of full citizenship and freedom for women was slow and torturous. It took 132 years for women to get the vote. It took women 185 years to achieve the right to control their bodies when it comes to pregnancy. But such laws and legal decisions mean nothing to those who still seek to limit a woman’s full citizenship and freedom, with 33 state legislatures pecking away at abortion ac- cess and resources. Breen, who doubles as special counsel to the extreme anti- abortion Thomas More Society, has been a leader in the effort to make safe, affordable abortion less safe and less affordable; and by extension, women less free.

In voting against the ERA, Breen ignored the historic arc that inches women closer to their rightful place in our great democratic experiment. His reasoning was chilling, such as saying the ERA’s supporters have “no other thing to do than expand abortion rights.”

I, and likely the majority of people in Illinois — as reflected by the 62 percent bipartisan vote to pass the ERA in Illinois — prefer the profound words of Breen’s Republican colleague Christine Winger: “I am pro- life. Again, I am pro- life. I have a 2- year- old daughter. … In the state of Illinois, she should have the same opportunities as men. Vote ‘ yes.’ ”

Thankfully for Winger’s daughter, and for every woman in Illinois, 71 other legislators joined Winger in voting “yes.” Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn

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