President Biden's choice to follow the last Administration and block publication of the ERA with the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization in front of this recast Supreme Court positions the United States to socially regress into a virulent domination system.
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN - WE HAVE MOVED THE UNITED STATES INTO A DEMOCRACY WHERE WE ARE ALL CITIZENS OF EQUAL STATURE -
Why publishing the ERA gives a Constitutional basis to the Roe decision and changes the arguments before the Supreme Court -
1920 - The truth is that the only equality with men that Women have under our Constitution is the right to vote under the 19th Amendment.
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.”
1972 - Equal Rights Amendment sent to the States to ratify.
1973 - The Justices in Roe v Wade, knowing that the ERA was on its way to be ratified, balanced a culture of life with a Women’s personal right to autonomy and bodily integrity and used the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to end the criminalization of Women’s human right to choose when to have children and how many children to have -
14 Amendment Due Process Clause -
“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; nor deny to any person within it jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
1982 - Both parties agree to ditch Democracy and normalize that it is just fine for them to create an arbitrary 7-10 year deadline for the Civil Rights of half of the population.
1982 - Fairness Doctrine is dismantled allowing news to become propaganda
1992 - Planned Parenthood v. Casey upheld the framework in Roe but began to chip away at Women’s rights by altering the standard for analyzing State restrictions.
1992 - The 27th Amendment published in the Constitution amidst legal controversy that it was 203 years old.
2011 - The curtain was pulled back on Women’s fantasy that they could rely on the Supreme Court interpreting the 14th Amendment to give Women equal sex based rights when Justice Scalia said
“Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that is what it meant.” “Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex hey, we have things called legislatures and they enact things called laws”
2020 - The People Spoke and the 38th State ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. The arbitrary deadline finagled in the preamble of the Amendment was to be wrestled with in the courts. Americans are asking the courts to deem a 7 year deadline on the Civil Rights of half the population as cruel, irresponsible and tyrannical. The deadline was not voted on by the States and the courts need to rule that it does not block the effectiveness of the 28th Amendment. ERA had a 2 year grace period for States to come into compliance.
28th Amendment -
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
2020 The Archivist of the United States by law is to publish an updated Constitution with the 28th Amendment and courts are to wrangle with legal issues just like they did with all Amendment the latest being the 203 year old 27th.
2020 William Barr produces an Office of Legal Counsel Memo 1/6/2020 telling the Archivist not to publish the updated Constitution. The Archivist complies and does not publish.
2021 - President Biden does not lift the Barr Memo and has lawyers in court arguing against the ERA.
2022 - January 27 the ERA becomes effective in the Constitution. The ERA solidifies the assumption made in 1972 in Roe v Wade, that 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause is to be applied equally to Women and men.
2022 - Without publication the judges are operating on the old Constitution in which Women are 2nd class citizens and can easily be discriminated against by the Government. Conservative Supreme Court Judges have a clear lane to roll back 50 years of Civil Rights for 51% of the population.
We need Publication of an Updated Constitution with the 28th Amendment Immediately -
If the Equal Rights Amendment is immediately published in the Constitution, the lawyers supporting reproductive rights, including the US Solicitor General, can ask for leave to re-brief their legal arguments based on the ERA.
ERA publication means that the Supreme Court must recognize that our Constitution no longer allows the Government to discriminate based on sex. The court is obligated to apply the Strict Scrutiny Standard which is the standard used for discrimination base on race, religion and national origin.
ERA publication means that the burden of proof shifts. The Government has the burden of proving that its challenged policy is Constitutional and it must show that its policy is necessary to achieve a compelling State interest.
Biden's Non Publication of an Updated Constitution with the 28th Amendment
Non publication gives the conservative majority on the Supreme Court a clear lane to discriminate against Women and deem them the Life Bearers for the society without human rights to personal autonomy and bodily integrity.
Justices, who want social regression to a Domination System can easily shift to a forced birthing agenda for the country. The originalist view of the Constitution holds that it was written by and for white men, amended in 1868 to include all men and amended in 1920 to allow Women to vote. Justices so inclined can use the Constitution to provide a foundation to a sex hierarchy that can be exploited for purposes of protecting the inherent male right to Women’s bodies.
What needs to be done?
President Biden must clear the log jam verbally or through an Executive Order ASAP (see Model Below) so the Archivist can comply with the law and publish an updated Constitution containing the 28th Amendment;
President Biden needs to publicly talk about the importance of celebrating the Democracy envisioned by generations of Americans that embraces us all as equal citizens.
Roe v. Wade 410 U.S. 113
Planned Parenthood v Casey 505 U.S.833
Why Women need the freedom to control their reproductive lives -
“It appears as if the surest way to curse one’s nation is to subordinate its women.”
"We argue that what is done to women, ultimately is done to the nation-state” (First Political Order)
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“ The ability of Women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” (at 30 Casey 505 U.S.833, 856 (1992) )
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“The ability to decide whether and when to have children is a fundamental aspect of being treated as an equal, respected and participation member of our Democracy. Women must be free to exercise this fundamental freedom on equal terms.”
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There are statistical studies showing causal links between legalized abortion and women moving more towards equality in multiple spheres. (Turn Away Study)
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“Full and equal rights for women are key to a stable and thriving society The data is clear countries are more secure, peaceful and prosperous when people of all genders can participate fully and equitable in every sphere of public life. Economies are larger and stronger when women are equally represented. Peace deals are more likely to last when women are at the negotiating table. In countries with high levels of gender equality have stronger and more resilient democracies” (Antony Blinken Secretary of State.)
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Remember, when Hitler was elected-and he was elected-his very first official act was to padlock the family planning clinics and declare abortion a crime against the State. Mussolini did exactly the same thing. Because they knew that controlling reproduction and nationalizing Women’s bodies is the first step in an all-controlling State. (Gloria Steinem)
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Model Executive Order
PROPOSED EXECUTIVE ORDER FOR PRESIDENT BIDEN TO DIRECT THE ARCHIVIST TO PUBLISH THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
Executive Order ________ of March ____, 2022
Publishing the Ratified Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution
By the authority vested in me as President by the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy.
Advancing gender equity and equality is a matter of human rights, justice, and fairness. It is also a strategic imperative that reduces poverty and promotes economic growth, increases access to education, improves health outcomes, advances political stability, and fosters democracy. The full participation of all people—including women and girls—across all aspects of our society is essential to the economic well-being, health, and security of our Nation and of the world.
It is therefore the policy of my Administration that every person should be treated with equality under the laws of the United States and of every state therein and should face no discrimination on the basis of sex.
Since the founding of our country, some 245 years ago with the Declaration of Independence, women have been subjected to invidious discrimination inflicted by the laws of this country and its several states. Because equal rights for women have not been explicitly written in the U.S. Constitution, women have continued to suffer legal, societal, and personal indignities and discrimination, physical and sexual assaults that often go unreported or un-redressed in criminal courts, unequal pay for equal work as men, lack of parity in the economic, professional, educational and political spheres, and unequal treatment and bias in the legal system. Women have been deprived of the full benefits of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Without the Equal Rights Amendment published in the U.S. Constitution, women are subjected to a lesser standard of judicial scrutiny, than the strict scrutiny standard the new 28th Amendment will provide, meaning that women have heretofore suffered more discrimination without the benefits of the Equal Rights Amendment.
It is also the policy of my Administration that the January 6, 2020 Opinion, of the Office of Legal Counsel, on the Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, Opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice, 44 Op. O.L.C. (released January 8, 2020), was improvidently and wrongly decided, because the deadline in the Equal Rights Amendment was placed, not in its text, but solely in the Preamble, which unconstitutionally interfered with the States’ rights under Art. V and the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Being unconstitutional, the deadline is void ab initio.
Three-fourths of the states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, in accordance with Art. V of the U.S. Constitution, with the last three states being Nevada and Illinois, in 2017 and 2018, respectively, and the thirty-eighth, the Commonwealth of Virginia, which ratified the Equal Rights Amendment on January 27, 2020, which date is and shall be known as the date the Equal Rights Amendment was fully ratified.
It is the policy of my Administration to prevent and to combat discrimination on the basis of sex, and to do so by publishing the Equal Rights Amendment forthwith as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
On March 24, 2020, the Archivist of the United States recorded Virginia’s ratification with a notation that said ratification occurred after the void deadline expired. On the same date, the Archivist added the same notation to the previously recorded ratifications of Nevada and Illinois. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION: EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT, LIST OF STATE RATIFICATION ACTIONS (https://www.archives.gov/files/foia/pdf/era-list-of-state-ratification- actions-03-24-2020.pdf).
It is the policy of my Administration that the Archivist of the United States, shall remove the aforementioned notations, and per 1 U.S.C. § 106b, that the Archivist of the United States shall forthwith record that the Equal Rights Amendment was duly ratified on January 27, 2020.
Section 2. Specific Provisions.
(a) Consistent with the policies set forth in Section 1 of this Order, the Archivist of the United States shall remove the aforementioned notations, with regard to the void deadline, to the ratifications of Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia.
(b) Consistent with the policies set forth in section 1 of this Order, the Archivist of the United States shall publish the Equal Rights Amendment forthwith as the 28th Amendment to the U.S.Constitution.
Section 3. General Provisions.
(a) Except as stated herein-above and as are the natural and legal consequences of the publication of the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Archivist of the United States or the Office of Legal Counsel.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(Model Executive Order drafted by Arlaine Rockey, Esq. ArlaineRockey.com)