AFA of PA ACTION ALERT
February 11, 2020
Issue
The Democrats Are Trying to Resurrect the Long Dead ERA
Details
The 1972 ERA states, “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would remove all distinctions between male and female in federal law, was first introduced in 1972 with a deadline of 1979 for 38 states to ratify it. When the initial deadline of March 22, 1979 was looming, Congress voted to extend the deadline to June 30, 1982 – but did so by a simple majority vote. The second deadline came and went with no new ratifications, and five of the original ratifying states voted in the meantime to rescind their approval of the amendment.
So, all agree that it was dead -until recently . . . the Democrats are aggressively trying to revive the failed amendment. In fact, three more states – Nevada, Illinois and, more recently, Virginia — have ratified the ERA, thus the Democrats are claiming they now have the 38 states needed to ratify this amendment! Let’s just forget the five states that have rescinded their initial ratification!
Liberal Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D-NY), speaking in support of the ERA in 1971, told the House Judiciary Committee, “Thus the amendment … eliminates all existing legal distinctions based on sex and rejects the assumption that sex is ever a reasonable legal classification.”
In other words, any sex-based distinction in a law would be unconstitutional under the ERA, and a law banning abortion clearly makes a sex-based distinction because only women become pregnant.
In 1972 Professor Paul Freund of the Harvard Law School told ERA opponent Sen. Ervin (D-NC) that; “The strict model of racial equality, moreover, would require that there be no segregation of the sexes in prisons, reform schools, public restrooms, and other public facilities.”
You get the idea as to how bad this constitutional amendment would be . . . and the Democrats are pushing forward with it!
Action Steps
US House Democrats have scheduled a vote on the Equal Rights Amendment tomorrow! H.J. Res 79 would remove the ratification deadline. Go here to ask your US Representative to vote ‘No’ on H.J. Res 79.
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