Schlafly << SHLAHF lee, >> Phyllis Stewart (1924-2016), was a leading supporter of the traditional role of women as mothers and homemakers. She gained national attention in the United States when she helped defeat the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution of the United States. The ERA called for men and women to be treated equally by law. Schlafly believed the amendment would deprive women of such legal benefits as their right to get financial support from their husbands and their exemption from combat duty in the armed forces. The ERA won congressional approval in 1972. But it never took effect because it did not win approval from the required number of states by a 1982 deadline.
In 1972, Schlafly founded and became national chairman of Stop ERA, an organization that worked to defeat the ERA. In 1975, she founded another organization, Eagle Forum, which supports the preservation of traditional morality and the traditional American family. Schlafly was the author of A Choice Not An Echo (1964) and Pornography’s Victims (1987). She published a newsletter, The Phyllis Schlafly Report.
Schlafly was born on Aug. 15, 1924, in St. Louis, Missouri. She received a bachelor’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1944, and a master’s degree from Radcliffe College in 1945. Schlafly attended law school at Washington University, where she earned a law degree in 1978. Schlafly died on Sept. 5, 2016.
