Commentary: It was no accident women were left out of the Constitution. It's past time to right that wrong

It's not really your fault if the initials "ERA" makes you think of baseball and earned run averages. Because it's been close to 50 years since the Equal Rights Amendment made it through Congress and out to the state legislatures that needed to ratify it. But something happened on the ERA's way to making women explicitly equal under the U.S. Constitution. Something about its 24 plain words - "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex" - brought out the opposition. And so the ERA stalled, three states short of ratification.

Then last year, Nevada's Legislature voted for it, and this May, so did the Illinois Legislature. Which leaves one more state to make the needed 38. Now, the deadline for ratification expired long ago, although legally, it's possible that that doesn't matter.

But those votes, along with the #MeToo movement, the Women's March, the Trump presidency and a shout-out at the Oscars, have put new life in the ERA movement.

And with a possible victory this close ... one state away ... in spite of the legal thicket that