Posted on 01/10/2020 10:51:42 AM PST by Morgana
Ignoring a deadline that ended more than three decades ago, a Virginia Senate Committee advanced a measure Thursday to ratify the pro-abortion Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution.
The AP reports the committee voted 10-5 in favor of the ERA, including nine Democrats and one Republican, state Sen. Jill Vogel.
The vote happened just days after the U.S. Department of Justice said the ERA is dead because the 1982 deadline set by Congress has passed.
The ERA would amend the U.S. Constitution to guarantee equal rights for all born citizens no matter what their sex is. Though the intent seems good on the surface, pro-life leaders long have warned that abortion activists would use the amendment to destroy the limited protections that America provides to unborn babies. Under the amendment, even widely-supported abortion regulations such as the partial-birth abortion ban and parental consent for minors could be overturned. It also could force taxpayers to pay for abortions, something polls consistently show most Americans oppose.
On Thursday, pro-life women leaders rallied against the ERA in Virginia, according to Capital News Service.
Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, warned that the language in the amendment is vague and could be interpreted to allow abortion on demand. She said she believes women already have achieved equality, according to the report.
“Today I am different than men and yet equal under the U.S. Constitution, and Virginia Constitution and Virginia laws,” Cobb said.
Students for Life regional coordinator Stephanie Stone also raised concerns that abortion activists will use the amendment to end all protections for babies in the womb, the report continues.
On its website, the pro-abortion group NARAL said the ERA would “reinforce the constitutional right to abortion by clarifying that the sexes have equal rights, which would require judges to strike down anti-abortion laws because they violate both the constitutional rights to privacy and sexual equality.”
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Justice said it is too late for states to ratify the amendment.
“We conclude that Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a deadline on the ratification of the ERA and, because that deadline has expired, the ERA Resolution is no longer pending before the States,” it stated.
The DOJ cited statute 1 U.S.C. § 106b, which says that Congress has the authority to set a deadline for ratifying a Constitutional amendment. According to the DOJ, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Congress’s authority to impose the deadline as well.
However, pro-abortion Democrats, who now control the Virginia legislature, are pushing ahead with the ERA anyway. Virginia would become the 38th and final state needed to ratify the amendment.
Here’s more from the local news:
When the 2020 General Assembly convened Wednesday, Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn, D-Fairfax, said in opening remarks “this House will pass the Equal Rights Amendment.” …
Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William, believes the DOJ legal counsel’s opinion will not stop the ERA’s progress.
“I am more than confident that this is just another effort by people who want to stop progress and who don’t believe in women’s equality,” Carroll Foy said.
“And this is another one of their concerted efforts to deny us fundamental rights and equal protections. But the time has come; we are unrelenting. We will not be deterred, and we will have our full constitutional equality.”
U.S. Congress set a seven-year deadline for the ratification of the amendment, but it ended in 1982. Some pro-abortion lawmakers have ignored the deadline and passed the amendment anyway, including the Nevada legislature in 2017 and Illinois in 2018.
Meanwhile, several other states rescinded their ratification of the ERA.
If Virginia does ratify the ERA, a court challenge is almost certain.
ACTION ALERT: Contact Virginia state senators and urge them to oppose the ERA.
VA’s gonna need a lot of guillotines in the near future.
Hopefully, the revolutionary guard will sell tickets.
They’ll make millions.
“...the ERA is dead because the 1982 deadline set by Congress has passed”
Ya think???
I am not paying for some slut to have indiscriminate sex with males that are not me
The DOJ is correct and is simply enforcing a federal district court decision in NOW v. Idaho that declared the ratification window for the ERA expired in March 1979. Appeals to higher courts and the Supreme Court failed decades ago.
To revive the ERA, the Supreme Court would have to reverse its 1921 decision in Dillon v. Gloss and modify its 1939 decision in Coleman v. Miller. These two decisions form the backbone of the relationship between Congress and the amendatory process under Article V. Changing these decisions would throw the amendatory process into constitutional chaos, which is why the federal courts won't touch a Virginia-initiated suit with a 10-foot pole.
What is the thinking here? Men don’t pay to terminate their own pregnancy? And therefore women shouldn’t pay to terminate theirs?
I don’t really see the Equal Right aspect.
They never consider that a few states rescinded their ratifications of the equal rights amendment during the original time period for ratifications.
To say that Virginia would be the 38th state to ratify, ignores both the deadline and the rescinded ratifications.
You can’t ratify something that is already null and void.
I had a discussion about the ERA on this very site a while back. Someone here told me that the ERA was basically dead because of this deadline. I had never heard of any such statue of limitations on the amendments but I hoped he was right about it. Now it looks like the Justice Department has plainly stated it is a dead process. So glad to hear it.
I fully expect the left to resurrect it in the near future, however.
As the ratification window was closing in 1979, Congress decided to extend the window to March 1982. Rather than use the amendatory process, which requires a two thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, it chose to use the legislative process, which requires only a majority vote of both Houses and signature by the president. Jimmy Carter doubted the constitutionality of this method, but he signed the extension anyway.
In NOW v. Idaho, the federal courts got involved and declared that Congress used the wrong method to extend the ratification window. What Congress did was unconstitutional. Congress should have resubmitted the amendment proposal to the states for ratification by starting the whole process over from scratch, with a two thirds vote of each House to send it to the states for ratification.
Appeals to higher courts failed. The Supreme Court refused to hear the case because by then even the 1982 window had expired. The lower court decision in NOW v. Idaho stands: the ERA died in March 1979. Ratifications by Illinois and Virginia don't count and are just virtue signaling.
Men need abortions at low cost, readily available and socially acceptable. It allows them to have unprotected sex without concern for romance, commitment or long term financial responsibility.
Thanks for that educational response. I was not as informed about amendment procedures as I should be. I didn’t give the ERA amendment much thought because there had been almost no discussion of it in my lifetime. The extent of my knowledge about the ERA was that it was “frozen” because not enough states had ratified it. I actually did think that it could be still ratified if more states did so.
I’m so thankful I know better now.
Yeah, I mean, what’s this nonsense that “freedom of reproductive choice” somehow empowers women!?
It empowers us GUYS to have the milk without buying the cow, that’s what!
There’s a cabaret tune from 1906 called “I Could Love a Million Girls”. It goes with the ERA like june and moon.
"The ERA would amend the U.S. Constitution to guarantee equal rights for all born [??? emphasis added] citizens no matter what their sex is."
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
“Born citizens” deliberately wrongly ignores male and female unborn persons imo.
Note that there is nothing stopping any state from defining personhood as beginning at conception imo, strengthening 14th Amendment basic right-to-life protections for unborn persons by doing so imo.
”14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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 [emphasis added]; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The bottom line is that we don’t need constitutional equality protections for sex beyond 19th Amendment voting rights protections imo.
"19th Amendment:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."
Corrections, insights welcome.
Remember in November!
MAGA! Now KAGA! (Keep America Great Always!)
Tax money wasted... leftists are great at this...
Virginia voted in the Democrats, hope they’re enjoying the results. Today’s Democratic Party is something even people like George McGovern would consider to be crazy-left.
“MAGA! Now KAGA! (Keep America Great Always!)”
I sent the President a suggestion that they start using KAGA (Keep America Great Always) instead of just KAG (Keep America Great) You are the first person I’ve seen to use my suggestion. I hope it catches on because it retains the pizazz of MAGA.
“I am not paying for some slut to have indiscriminate sex with males that are not me”
Laz? Is that you in disguise?
Justice Department Confirms ERA is Dead, Would Have Forced Americans to Fund Abortions
Life News | January 08, 2020 | Micaiah Bilger
Posted on 01/10/2020 11:02:09 AM PST by Morgana
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3807161/posts
I agree. It rhymes too. =^)
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