Photo: Mario Tama / Getty Images
For: EFE Updated 27 Jan 2022, 04: 33 pm EST
WASHINGTON – The President Joe Biden urged this Thursday the Congress to include the gender equality within the Constitution with its endorsement of an amendment by the which feminist groups have been fighting for almost a century.
In a statement, Biden called on Congress to act “immediately” to support the Equal Rights Amendment, known by its acronym in English ERA ( Equal Rights Amendment) and that was presented for the first time in 1923.
Congress approved that amendment in 1972, but for it to be included in the Constitution it needed to be ratified by at least 38 states before 1973, although later the deadline was extended until 1982 .
This ratification led to a war between the feminist movement and the organization of the conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, encouraged by the rejection it provoked in 1973 the legalization of abortion by the Supreme Court.
Schlafly won that battle and the “ERA” was left out of the Constitution because it could not reach the 38 states required.
However, although technically it could no longer go forward, with the explosion of the “Me Too” movement, several states began to ratify the amendment and, in January of 2020, the southern Virginia became the number 17 state to do so .
Then, the government of Donald Trump (2020-2021) prevented the amendment from entering into force on the grounds that the deadline of 1982 had already passed and the ratifications of the last states were invalid.
But yesterday, Wednesday, the government of Biden issued a memorandum through the Department of Justice in which he questions that blockade of Trump and considers that the former president’s order does not prevent Congress from now endorse the amendment so that it enters into force.
After hearing the memorandum, two Democratic legislators with a long history in the feminist struggle, Carolyn Maloney and Jackie Speier, presented this Thursday a resolution that establishes that all legal requirements have already been met for the amendment to enter into force.
If Congress approves the resolution, as Biden asks, the “E RA” could be added to the Constitution.
It is it is very possible that the resolution will be approved in the lower house, where the Democrats have a majority; but, Republicans could block it in the Senate because, in that chamber, it would need a supermajority of 60 votes and the Democrats have only 50 seats.
The “ERA” has become in a symbol of the feminist struggle in the United States. In its first section it establishes that “equal rights before the law cannot be denied or restricted by the United States or by any state on the basis of sex.
2021
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