A big "FU" to those who said "The ERA isn't needed.

[no_hypocrisy]

The Constitution already protects the equality of women.”

[hlthe2b]

1. And may Phyllis Schlafly...

rot in hell or whatever the maggot-infested landfill equivalent.

[FoxNewsSucks]

5. Along with Aunt Amy, Virginia Foxx, Anita Bryant, Laura Ingram....

The list of women working against women is far too long. They all deserve to rot. And rot painfully.

[Solly Mack]

2. Yep

I'll go so far to say a big "FUCK YOU" to anyone who has ever been dismissive of the need to fully codify the rights of all marginalized people.

And to those who have ever told marginalized people to wait, to have patience, to not rock the boat.

[smirkymonkey]

4. +1000

[Sympthsical]

19. I did once get half a pony

But it tipped over.

[niyad]

3. "the courts will protect you".

[SYFROYH]

6. Would a passed ERA would have prevented this court from doing what its doing.

Wouldn't they just say that abortions are not protected at the federal level for men, too?

[Novara]

7. ERA would protect women against sex discrimination

Since women get pregnant and have abortions, denying them medical care specific to their sex equals sex discrimination. Denying a woman the right to her own body because she is a woman is sex discrimination.

The ERA would absolutely protect us.

[PoliticAverse]

8. Don't assume 5 justices currently on the Supreme Court would accept that argument.

The ERA says:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

You want abortion rights protected you need a specific law to do so.

Oh and another twist: In 2022 men get pregnant too.

[Novara]

10. Want to Protect the Right to Abortion? Pass the ERA!

Want to Protect the Right to Abortion? Pass the ERA!

snip........

The Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”), which would add an explicit guarantee of sex equality to the United States Constitution, would protect the right to abortion and the full range of reproductive healthcare and is more critically needed now than ever before.

Here are the reasons why:

There are several ways to understand how restrictions on access to abortion (and other reproductive health care such as contraception) amount to sex discrimination.

Restrictions on access to abortion violate the ERA because:

Restrictions on abortion single out abortions for more onerous treatment than other medical procedures that carry similar or greater risks, imposing “an unnecessary, irrational, and unjustifiable undue burden on women” and other pregnant people “seeking to exercise their right to”[1] make decisions about whether to end a pregnancy.

Restrictions on abortion perpetuate harmful and discriminatory gender stereotypes that limit equal participation in society. For decades the Supreme Court embraced the view that “the natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life…. The paramount destiny and mission of women are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator.”[2] This view was eventually abandoned by the Supreme Court as an outdated stereotype denying the equal right to equal citizenship of all, regardless of gender. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg specifically linked restrictions on access to abortion to those outdated stereotypes in one of the Supreme Court’s most important abortion cases: that they reflect a gendered notion of citizenship in which women were “regarded as the center of home and family life, with attendant special responsibilities that precluded full and independent legal status under the Constitution. Those views are no longer consistent with our understanding of the family, the individual, or the Constitution.”[3]

The ability to control one’s reproduction is essential to the possibility of equality in the workplace and in public life. The right to abortion access is a necessary condition for—and thus instrumental to—women’s full citizenship and equality. As Justice Ginsburg put it: full and equal citizenship “is intimately connected to a person’s ability to control their reproductive lives.”[4]

Because laws restricting abortion subject women to state-compelled pregnancy, they shape the lives of every person who is capable of becoming pregnant. Both the work of childbearing and the work of childrearing compromise parents’ opportunities in education and employment in gendered ways. Thus, for reasons physiological and social, such regulations affect women’s lives in ways they simply cannot and do not affect men’s lives.[5]

Constitutional law scholar Reva Siegel put it most clearly: restrictions on abortion offend the principle of sex equality “because of the status-based attitudes about women they reflect. For centuries, this society has defined women as mothers and defined the work of motherhood as women’s work. These are the assumptions which make it ‘reasonable’ to force women to become mothers.”[6]

Restrictions on abortion coerce pregnant people to assume the role and do the work of parenthood without addressing the emotional, financial, and other costs of compelled parenthood. Research shows that mothers are much more likely to experience significant career interruptions in order to attend to their families’ needs. “While women represent nearly half of the U.S. workforce, they still devote more time than men on average to housework and child care and fewer hours to paid work, although the gap has narrowed significantly over time. Among working parents of children younger than 18, mothers in 2013 spent an average of 14.2 hours per week on housework, compared with fathers’ 8.6 hours. And mothers spent 10.7 hours per week actively engaged in child care, compared with fathers’ 7.2 hours.”[7] The disproportionate burden placed on mothers to care for children is one of the principal causes of structural sex-based inequality in the wage labor market and other sectors.

The consequences of reducing access to abortion and contraception, and thus increasing compelled parenthood, were compounded exponentially by the COVID-19 pandemic. In a survey from May and June of 2021, one out of four women who became unemployed during the pandemic reported the job loss was due to a lack of childcare, twice the rate of men surveyed. A more recent survey shows the losses have not slowed down: between February and August of 2020, mothers of children 12 years old and younger lost 2.2 million jobs compared to 870,000 jobs lost among fathers.[8]

Restrictive abortion access disproportionately impacts low-income women, women of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, young women, and women living in rural areas who face overlapping barriers to health care, educational and economic opportunities, access to housing, job security, financial safety nets, and social and political equality.

[PoliticAverse]

11. Yes, you can find arguments supporting your belief, you can also find arguments that disagree.

Are you sure there are 5 justices _currently_ on the Supreme Court would accept your argument?

[Novara]

13. When does the supreme court get to overturn a Constitutional Amendment? Or even change its wording?

The answer: never. Changing the actual words of the Constitution requires an amendment, as does deleting or repealing an amendment. The SCOTUS can't overturn a Constitutional amendment.

Equal rights means equal rights. An abortion or a vasectomy should not be made illegal; to do so is discrimination based on sex. But hell, let's try to make vasectomy illegal. Think that will fly?

Seriously, it isn't a simple opinion on whether the ERA protects abortion. Conferring women with gender equality means they cannot be denied reproductive healthcare, because denying them medical care based on their sex (being a woman) is discrimination in its truest sense, especially gender-based medical care.



But you be you, and you go ahead and argue against Constitutional scholars. Me? I know they know more than I do so I am paying attention and learning from them. Constitutional scholars do not believe any interpretation of that simple statement: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex” would ever mean that abortion could be illegal; it would be a clear violation of sex discrimination.

[PoliticAverse]

15. "go ahead and argue against Constitutional scholars" - Constutional scholars don't determine

these things, 9 Supreme Court justices do. You have a lot of faith in justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett.
Good luck with that.

Anyway it a lot easier to pass laws protecting the right to abortion than to pass a constitutional amendment.

Also, if you are redoing the ERA from scratch, why not explicitly put in the protection of abortion rights?

[Novara]

20. The SCOTUS can't change or strike down a Constitutional Amendment.

Bodily autonomy is inherent in the ERA. No need to spell out abortion.

Sheesh.

[PoliticAverse]

21. Yeah, they just interpret constitutional amendments...

like they interpret "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" doesn't mean states can't restrict women's abortions.

[Novara]

22. Yes, it does.

[Polybius]

14. The million dollar question is do we have to start over again

RGB said yes, and I tend to agree.

[Novara]

17. Probably

The time limit to ratification is an arbitrary construct and it can be easily argued that it is meaningless.

However, if it can be argued that it should be struck down, this corrupt SCOTUS would argue that it is absolute, setting precedent for future amendments, including a re-do of the ERA.

So it would probably be better to start over, with no arbitrary time limit construct. But then again, some of the red states who ratified it before say they want to take it back, so would a re-do even give us any different results?

Sigh.

[PoliticAverse]

23. If no do-over is required then the ERA has passed, because the last state necessary to do so

has ratified it (assuming states can't rescind ratifications).

Last three states to ratify Equal Rights Amendment sue to add it to constitution
https://www.jurist.org/news/2020/01/last-three-states-to-ratify-equal-rights-amendment-sue-to-add-it-to-constitution/

[no_hypocrisy]

9. Likely. Women's autonomy could not be

abridged or qualified on account of their gender.

[Martin68]

12. Absolutely. The Constitution should be amended to clearly give women equal rights.

[867-5309.]

16. GQP response -

it is equal, women and men are both denied choice.

[FakeNoose]

18. Did any Democrats ever say that? I don't think so

But yes, a message to those who believed it was unnecessary: