WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Phyllis Schlafly, who became a "founding mother" of the modern U.S. conservative movement by battling feminists in the 1970s and working tirelessly to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, died on Monday at the age of 92, her Eagle Forum group said. She was 92. Schlafly, who lived in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, Missouri, died at her home in the presence of her family, Eagle Forum said in a statement. The Radcliffe graduate who married a member of a wealthy Illinois family came to prominence in the 1960s with her self-published book "A Choice, Not an Echo," supporting the presidential campaign of senator Barry Goldwater, who helped lay the future foundations of an increasingly hardline Republican Party. The book, which sold three million copies, chronicled the history of the Republican National Convention and is credited for helping conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona earn the 1964 GOP nomination. Yet she told The Associated Press in 2007 that perhaps her greatest legacy was the Eagle Forum, which she founded in 1972 in suburban St. Louis, where she lived. The Eagle Forum called Schlafly an "iconic​ American​ leader​ whose love for America was surpassed only by her love of God and her family​​" whose focus "from her earliest days until her final ones was​ protecting ​the​ ​family, which she understood as the building block of life." Schlafly was most well-known for her work fighting the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970's, emerging as one of the leading female critics of the feminist movement. She had a pie smashed into her face and pig’s blood thrown on her, and feminist Betty Friedan once told Schlafly: “I’d like to burn you at the stake.” She was chastised in a 1970s “Doonesbury” — a framed copy of which hung on her office wall. Schlafly once called feminists "a bunch of bitter women seeking a constitutional cure for their personal problems," Time said, while insisting that "women find their greatest fulfillment at home with their family." A deeply polarizing figure for decades, the constitutional lawyer campaigned against communism, abortion rights and, most famously, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which died after it was already passed by both houses of Congress in 1972 and ratified by 35 of the required 38 states. 'They were never able to show women would get any benefit out of it,' she told the AP in 2007. Her crowning achievement was crusading to prevent the Equal Rights Amendment from being added to the U.S. Constitution and it made Schlafly a leader in the modern American conservative movement. "The pay gap between men and women is not all bad because it helps to promote and sustain marriages," she said. Women already have all the rights that men have.”

Saint Louis University history professor Donald Critchlow, who profiled Schlafly in his 2005 book, “Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade,” said the defeat of the amendment helped revive conservatism and helped pave the way for Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Phyllis Stewart was born Aug. 15, 1924, in St. Louis and grew up in a home she described as Republican but not activist. Shortly after marrying lawyer Fred Schlafly in 1949, she became active in Republican Party politics in Alton, Illinois, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice. She put herself through Washington University by firing weapons as an ammunition factory tester and later earned a master's degree in political science from Radcliffe. She enrolled in Washington University School of Law in 1976, and at age 51, graduated 27th in a class of 204. "Phyllis Schlafly is a conservative icon who led millions to action, reshaped the conservative movement, and fearlessly battled globalism and the 'kingmakers' on behalf of America's workers and families," Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump -- whom she had endorsed -- said in a statement Monday night. She backed Trump partly because he was the only candidate talking about illegal immigration, which she said was "the most important issue in the country."
American Conservative icon Phyllis Schafly dies at the age of 92.