Removing the Deadline for the Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LESKO. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill. This push to remove the deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment is an unnecessary and unconstitutional power-grab.

This bill is unconstitutional. Congress set a deadline for the ERA; it was 1979. With only 35 of the 38 States needed for ratification at the time, Congress extended the deadline to 1982, but no other States joined in, ending the ratification process for the equal rights amendment.

Even the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the deadline for the ERA ratification had long passed. She said: ``I would like to see a new beginning. I'd like it to start over. There's too much controversy about latecomers--Virginia, long after the deadline passed. Plus, a number of States have withdrawn their ratification. So, if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard States that said, ``We've changed our minds?''' If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle want to ratify the ERA, they have to start over.

Women also already have equal rights under the law. In decision after decision, the United States Supreme Court has underscored that the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution gives women equal rights and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, rendering, I believe, the ERA unnecessary.

Finally, if ratified, the ERA would be used to codify the right to abortion, undoing pro-life protections, and forcing taxpayers to fund abortions.

The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that their State's ERA provision required the State to fund abortions. Numerous pro-abortion groups have already made the case for ratifying the ERA on the basis of expanding their abortion agenda. Just listen to the words of the organizations pushing this legislation themselves.

The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, NARAL, has claimed that, ``With its ratification, the ERA would reinforce the constitutional right to abortion.''

Planned Parenthood and the Women's Law Project has said that State bans and government funding of elective abortions are ``contrary to a modern understanding of the ERA.''

The National Organization for Women has said, ``An ERA--properly interpreted--could negate the hundreds of laws that have been passed restricting access to abortion care and contraception.''

With this unconstitutional bill, my colleagues across the aisle are hiding behind the rhetoric of equality for women to eliminate any and all protections for unborn babies, half of which would be girls, then women, if given the chance to live.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

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