The Patriot Post® · Dems Dust Off the Equal Rights Amendment
Democrats don’t have much to run on these days, but one hardy perennial is sure to keep coming up: abortion on demand. Next to reecism, what else do they have?
Sure enough, abortion popped up again recently when two Democrat lawmakers — New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Missouri Congresswoman Cori Bush — unveiled a wacky idea to enshrine a failed amendment into the Constitution despite the empirical fact that it was resoundingly beaten back a half-century ago.
You readers who are nearing retirement age may remember it: the Equal Rights Amendment.
As The Hill reports, “The joint resolution argues that the ERA has met all the ratification requirements to become the 28th amendment to the Constitution, including being ratified by Congress and a majority of states, and simply needs to be certified by Colleen Shogan, the first female archivist in the country.”
We’re not sure what the sex of the national archivist has to do with an illegitimate attempt to circumvent our constitutional process, but whatever. Equal rights!
Some quick history: The ERA was proposed in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972, but it failed to become our 28th Amendment because it failed to achieve ratification by 38 of the 50 states, as required by Article V of the Constitution. In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, but it did so long after the proposed amendment’s 1982 ratification deadline had passed. Sorry, Dems, but those were your rules.
What’s behind the dusting off of this half-century-old relic of braless women with hairy armpits? After all, women already have equal rights. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against someone because of sex. And this now includes pregnancy and related conditions, and it includes sexual orientation and gender “identity.”
Might it have something to do with abortion? Mmm, it might.
Ever since the Supreme Court rightly struck down Roe v. Wade last year, the hard Left of the Democrat Party has been eager to resurrect and ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
They believe the ERA and the language “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” will protect abortion on demand across all 50 states.
Republicans, though, rightly see the ERA as redundant because of the 14th Amendment, which reads, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“Equality is wildly popular,” insists Congresswoman Bush. “Equality is so popular today that more than 85% of Americans across all parties support having a gender provision in the Constitution.”
Bush, the most obnoxious and hypocritical Defund Democrat in all of Congress, apparently can’t be bothered by the bloody state of her home district of St. Louis, which has routinely been among the most murderous places in the nation in recent years. “The only way to defeat [the ERA] is by dirty tricks and procedural hurdles,” she added. “We can’t let paperwork keep us out of the U.S. Constitution.”
We’ve set a pretty low bar for Democrats when it comes to constitutional literacy, so it seems that when one of them actually acknowledges that we have a Constitution and that there’s a process by which it can be amended, we feel obliged to note it.
Duly noted.
“If we want to be guaranteed these equal rights under our Constitution, like every American should have, we need to make sure that ERA passes.” So said no less a constitutional expert than actress Lisa Ann Walter, who continued: “And I can’t understand anybody who doesn’t make this a critical voting point in the next election. It’s crazy to me that we’re out there. If you see the old broads like me out there at the women’s marches, we’re carrying signs that say, ‘I can’t believe I’m still doing this.’”
Yep, old broads like her. But Walter knows the game. Democrats want this to be “a critical voting point” among their most reliable supporters: single women.
Moving on past this gimmick, we need to remember who we’re dealing with. Because when the constitutional process proves to be insurmountable — as it did earlier this year when an ERA ratification measure met a brick wall with the Senate’s 60-vote cloture threshold — Democrats will do what they now always do: They’ll pass an executive order. It’s only a matter of time, especially as we near our next election.
Lastly, we should ask the Democrats to do a bit of self-reflection. Specifically, we should ask them which modern-day movement has been most instrumental in undermining women’s rights. And we should ask because we know the Democrats won’t ask. But the truth is that nothing has done more to damage womanhood and women’s rights than men who pretend to be women, whether in popular culture or on the athletic field or in the workplace.
For this, the Left has no one to blame but itself.
Updated with additional historical background of the ERA.