My idea is that we've worked so many years for equality, but the only area where we've achieved equality, with men, is in job loss. We are still 77 cents to the dollar.

I was proud to be an original cosponsor of the Violence Against Women Act when Congress passed it in 1994, and was proud to support the previous renewals in 2000 and 2005. These bills always enjoyed large, bipartisan support.

The proposal that men and women should be treated equally under the law is hardly a controversial concept.

Healthy moms mean healthy families. When my Republican colleagues held a hearing about birth control and refused to include a single woman on the first panel as a witness, I asked, "Where are the women?"

More women are working because they have to, that's what it takes to put the food on the table and pay the rent. And yet we have not changed our policies to support the family. The right wing goes to the floor, and they did when they were in power, and talk about family values. Well, where are they? Family values is support for child care. Family values is equal pay for equal work so that women are paid appropriately.

We have not ratified The Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Among Women. I think 194 countries have signed onto it, but the United States has not. And CEDAW to the United Nations is what the Equal Rights Amendment or the women's equality amendment is to the United States. I think we should pass the women's equality amendment and a lot of these other fights would go away.

In America, we have long stood by the principle that the protections of the law are not meant just for some.