The House of Representatives voted 232-183 on Thursday to remove the original deadline. The measure is unlikely to get any farther than that, however. Senate leadership, the Department of Justice, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have all stated that the Equal Rights Amendment is dead legislation. Any effort o ratify an amendment like it would need to start from the beginning of the process. Even if the Republican majority in the senate were to support this time-traveling bill, the ERA would be contested heavily in federal courts.
During House debate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “This [ERA] has nothing to do with the abortion issue.” Douglas D. Johnson, the senior policy advisor for National Right to Life, strongly disagreed. “Pelosi says the ERA has nothing to do with abortion, but her friends at Planned Parenthood, NARAL, NOW, and the National Women’s Law Center have been shouting from the rooftops that it has a great deal to do with abortion.” The Associated Press's David Crary even reported on Jan. 21 that “… Abortion-rights supporters are eager to nullify the [ERA ratification] deadline and get the amendment ratified so it could be used to overturn state laws restricting abortion.”
The amendment simply states, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” A similar amendment to the New Mexico Constitution has been ruled by the state's Supreme Court to require state funding of abortion, and many pro-abortion organizations believe this amendment will be interpreted the same way at the federal level.
The argument in favor of this interpretation is that regulating abortion affects only women because only women become pregnant. If abortion only affects women, then any legislation that restricts abortion is discriminatory. This is, of course, untrue, since both men and women are affected by abortion. Abortion affects children of both sexes as well as their fathers.
