would be drafted into military service or have to per-
form heavy labors or that the government would be
forced to recognize same-sex marriage. One highly
successful campaign posited the rise of mandatory
mixed-sex sports teams and bathrooms.
The possible impact of the ERA on abortion laws,
however, was the fear that opponents of the ERA re-
peatedly played on the most. On November 15,
1983, the Democratic majority in the House of Rep-
resentatives tried to pass the ERA again, starting the
ratification process from scratch, under a procedure
that prevented the consideration of any amend-
ments. Fourteen cosponsors proceeded to vote
against the bill, insisting on an amendment pro-
posed by Congressman James Sensenbrenner that
read, “Nothing in this Article shall be construed to
grant, secure, or deny any right relating to abortion
or the funding thereof.”
Reproductive Rights The focus on reproductive
rights by ERA opponents highlighted many fears
about the changing status of women and the ERA’s
potential impact on antiabortion laws. This focus
was in part fueled by the practice of states using
ERAs to challenge antiabortion policies, efforts that
succeeded in Connecticut and New Mexico.
Reproductive rights continued to be a major area
of contention throughout the 1980’s. In 1986, anti-
abortion activist Randall Terry founded Operation
Rescue, whose mission was to block access to family-
planning clinics. Antiabortion leaders not only
pointed to the rights of the fetus but also asserted
that legal abortion challenged the potential father’s
right to control the family. That same year, George
Gilder wrote in his bookMen and Marriagethat mak-
ing abortion and birth control available to women
reduced the penis to “an empty plaything.” Multiple
cases were brought to court defending the rights of
fathers, usually against women who would not com-
ply with male demands or who had recently filed for
divorce. Many doctors stopped offering the abor-
tion procedure; by 1987, 85 percent of the counties
in the United States had no abortion services.
The 1980’s also saw the implementation of fetal
protection policies by numerous companies, includ-
ing fifteen major corporations, such as Dow and
General Motors. These policies barred women from
jobs that had been traditionally male and that paid
high wages but that involved exposure to harmful
chemicals or radiation that might harm a fetus.
Around that time, the Reagan administration barred
investigation into the harmful effects of video dis-
play terminals (VDTs), machines employed in tradi-
tionally female occupations. When the National In-
stitute for Occupational Safety and Health attempted
to investigate higher rates of reproductive problems
among women working with VDTs, the Office of
Management and Budget demanded that questions
dealing with fertility and stress be dropped from a
survey administered to the workers, saying that such
questions had no practical utility. Although evidence
existed that industrial toxins affected both men and
women in producing birth defects, no laws were
passed protecting them. Reducing the level of toxins
in the workplace was also not considered.
In 1984, the caseOil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers
International Union v. American Cyanamid Co., brought
by a group of women who had undergone steriliza-
tion in order to keep their jobs, reached a federal
court. Federal appellate judge Robert H. Bork ruled
in favor of the company, saying that the fetal protec-
tion policy was valid and that the company had been
sued only because “it offered the women a choice.”
The company’s settlement of $200,000 was divided
among the eleven plaintiffs.The Conservative Backlash to Feminism The few
victories for women’s rights made in earlier decades
did not go unchallenged in the 1980’s. Conserva-
tive leaders such as Weyrich and Howard Phillips
proclaimed that women’s equality led only to un-
happiness for women. Conservatives criticized the
women’s movement for destroying moral values and
dismantling the traditional family, while evangelist
and Moral Majority cofounder Jerry Falwell declared
that “the Equal Rights Amendment strikes at the
foundation of our very social structure” in his 1981
bookListen, America!In 1981, the Heritage Founda-
tion, a conservative think tank, producedMandate
for Leadership, which warned against “the increasing
leverage of feminist interests” and claimed that femi-
nists had infiltrated government agencies.
That same year, the Heritage Foundation drafted
its first legislative effort: the Family Protection Bill,
which sought to dismantle legal achievements of
the women’s movement. Its proposals included the
elimination of federal laws supporting equal educa-
tion, the forbidding of “intermingling of the sexes in
any sport or other school-related activities,” the re-
quirement that marriage and motherhood be em-1060 Women’s rights The Eighties in America