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Back in 1972, a proposed amendment was sent out to all 50 states for ratification.  It was called the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and it simply proclaimed, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex."

Remember, three-quarters of the states (38 of 50) must ratify an amendment before it becomes part of our Constitution.  States originally had seven years – until 1979 – to ratify the ERA.  However, for a variety of reasons it never passed the required 38 states, even after the deadline was extended out to 1982.

That is until last month.  40 years after the original deadline, Virginia recently became the 38th state to ratify this proposed Amendment.  Which leads to these two questions:

1. Why the renewed push for this amendment almost five decades later?
   
2. Why did liberals in the House of Representatives introduce a resolution – which we voted on today – that would retroactively eliminate the (already extended) 1982 ratification deadline?

Well, the truth is the Equal Rights Amendment is no longer about equal rights. Not anymore… at least not in 2020.  Today, the left is hoping to use it to advance the pro-choice, convenient abortion movement.  How so??  Let’s just go back and read the original 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."

With this language in our Constitution, abortion advocates will immediately seek to overturn EVERY law which limits abortion on the grounds that those laws can only apply to women, and therefore are unconstitutional under the Equal Rights Amendment.

Do you see what's happening here?  This is a backhanded attempt to amend our Constitution in order to overturn pro-life legislation, and guarantee unconstrained access to abortion. The ERA could also be used to nullify any laws that prohibit taxpayer funds from being used for abortions.

As expected, every liberal in the House voted today to eliminate the 1982 ratification deadline.  Fortunately this resolution will go nowhere in the Senate and would never be signed by the President, effectively killing the ERA because the deadline to ratify has long passed.

But that doesn’t mean the fight is over.  Now we move over to the courts, where pro-abortion groups will challenge the validity of the ratification deadlines, hoping to strip them away to enable the ERA to become part of our Constitution.  My hope is that this effort will fail.  Unfortunately, it will take years for that process to play out.