Someone who looks like me

Perhaps we should consider women’s struggle for equality to be like the tides—or rather, like ocean waves hitting the shore. Each time we make progress up the beach, we carry away a little of the sand as we recede back into the ocean.

As an example, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress in March 1972. The high water mark for the ERA probably occurred in 1979, when it was only three states short of ratification. We came so close to success before we receded under the gravitational force of the conservative backlash led by Phyllis Shlafly, who peddled the usual lie-based fears about equality for women.

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court granted us control of our own bodies. The right to make a medical decision was taken out of the hands of the state and given back to women and their doctors. And for a few, brief years, abortion was as readily available to women as was a Pap smear. Today, unless you are wealthy, or living in a blue state, they are becoming increasingly hard to obtain. And so on another front, the slow erosion of what had once been considered our rights continues.

Meanwhile, this year on International Women’s Day, every single major cable network gave Donald Trump more than an hour for a veritable informercial while Hillary Clinton was giving an uncovered speech in Cleveland. Hello? Anybody there? WTF!?!?! Even Sanders’ campaign called foul:

absolutely appalling that every network covered the guy hawking steaks instead of the former secretary of state.