Why do Republicans seek votes from women, when they oppose equality for women?
Recently, every Republican in the Maine House and all but one in the Maine Senate voted against the Maine Equal Rights Amendment bill (L.D. 344). Republicans are also blocking ratification of the federal ERA.
A little over a century ago, my suffragist great-grandmother, Florence Brooks Whitehouse, wrote in a letter to the Portland Evening Express: “We have never destroyed property, we have never menaced life, we have simply refused to pretend that we are duped, for a moment, by the politicians who pass out bouquets to us with one hand and hit us with the other.”
Look where we are now! Many Republicans support the violent and destructive Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and profess to support women, while systematically moving to suppress voting rights, strip women of their right to control their fertility and block equality under the law.
There is nothing “extreme” or “far-reaching” about the Maine ERA bill, as Republicans pretend. Here’s what it actually says: “Equality of rights under the law may not be denied or abridged by the State or any political subdivision of the State based on the sex of an individual. The Legislature has the power to enforce this section by appropriate legislation.”
Watch out for Republican “bouquets,” and keep an eye on what they actually do. They have no love for women’s equality.
Anne Gass
Gray
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