The short answer is abortion. Today’s E.R.A. opponents see the measure, above all, as a stalking horse that would result in bans on state laws that restrict or prohibit a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy. The debate over the amendment has changed significantly in the decades that it was introduced, regardless of whether or not that prediction was true. Phyllis Schlafly was a conservative activist who warned that sex equalization would lead to a circus of horrors. That ship sailed even without the E.R.A., of course, but in 2022 the concept of “sex” itself is being contested in ways even Ms. Schlafly’s darkest fantasies couldn’t have foretold.
This is why it is so important to have widespread public support for the current day. “Until the world is clamoring for this, the world will do nothing,” said Kati Hornung, a political organizer who led Virginia’s effort to pass the E.R.A. He now heads a group that aims to ensure it becomes the 28th Amendment. The state strategy, she told me, “was to make it part of a daily discussion, where you as a politician couldn’t go somewhere without being asked about it. We have to do nationwide what we did here in Virginia.”
The advocates haven’t given up entirely on the courts. A lawsuit was filed by three of the states’ attorneys general to ratify E.R.A. The lawsuit is at the U.S. Court of Appeals, Washington, D.C., and asks the archivist for certification of the amendment as required by federal law. The lawsuit was joined by five conservative-leaning state attorneys general to protest ratification.
Ms. Hornung believes the ultimate goal of sex is the same no matter how difficult the road may be. “We just have to have sex treated the same way as race, religion, country of origin. That seems fair and decent and reasonable,” she said. Right now, “it’s still men making decisions for the majority of the country, who are women.”
Abigail Adams wrote her husband John a letter on the last night of march 1776. He was off serving in Continental Congress, which would shape the Declaration of Independence. “By the way,” she wrote, “in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Don’t give the husbands such power. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.” She went on, “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
John Adams and his colleagues didn’t heed her warning, but we can. The Constitution must be treated not as a sacred text of another era but as a framework that can be used to adapt to the ever-growing and changing society. This is what the founders expected. They knew that they were not perfect and wanted their creation to be regularly updated, even though they did not anticipate how polarized the country would become. Although this polarization may seem a difficult reality of modern life, 40 percent of our Constitution in 2022 is composed of amendments. That is to say, the American people — those living today and those yet to come — are the authors of the Constitution no less than the founders are. It is not their document anymore. It is ours.
Source: NY Times