ERA Passes Out Of House Committee

Wednesday morning , May 16, the Equal Rights Amendment {SJRCA 4} passed out of House Human /services /committee in a vote 7-5. The amendment is now on the floor of the house. You say, how does the effect me? What is of importance to me and how does it affect us?

Tuesday afternoon, May 15, Rep Lou Lang, sponsor of the resolution did not have enough votes because one democratic member decided she could not support the resolution. So he replaced her with a substitute. But we are not out of the woods.

People are promoting the resolution and are setting up phone banks and calling legislators. Only the pro life legislators realize the seriousness of this bill. If passed the resolution will cause NO LIMITS on ABORTION across the nation, and could require TAX-PAYER funding for abortion all across the nation.

Some Republican legislators who always vote pro-life , have been convinced that the ERA will not have any impact on abortion, so they are planning to vote for the resolution.

Congressman Henry Hyde, well known constitutional scholar, testified against the ERA, in the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution{May 26, 1983}, "if it is proposed and ratified without an explicit provision against it's use as a pro- abortion device, will, in fact, be used to sweep away the minimal protection of unborn children that the courts currently allow, and also to mandate TAX FUNDING for abortions."


"The court holds have denied the constitutional right to a Government-financed abortion on the grounds that poor women who desire abortions are not within the so-called suspects classes against whom no law can discriminate without triggering strict scrutiny by the courts." {Strict scrutiny is the most stringent standard used by the courts to determine which is weightier-a constitutional right or the governments interest in overcoming the right.}

Strict scrutiny almost always results in the law being struck down as unconstitutional. If either sex or poverty had been designated by the court as a suspect classification, the Court as a suspect classification have found a right to abortion funding.

"Since 1970 the ERA advocates have emphasized that the amendment's principal legal effect would be to make sex a suspect classification under the Constitution the most important suspect classification at present is race. If sex discrimination were treated like race discrimination, Government refusal to fund abortions would be treated like a refusal to fund medical procedures that effect minority races."

Congressman Henry Hyde continues to say"If the Federal ERA were ratified there would be no need to for silence or evasion, so we would see ALL LAWS regulating abortion challenged vigorously on the argument that they are unconstitutional discrimination's against women.

It would be tragic if legislators who wish to minimize the killing of  pre-born children were to give lawyers and pro-abortion judges a new and powerful tool with which to enhance and extend the abortion right , especially by mandating the use of TAX FUNDS to pay for abortions."

PLEASE contact your state representatives and ask him or her to vote NO on the ERA {SJRCA 4}.

Published by permission Concerned Christians Newsletter










































ra Passes