Equal Rights Amendment North Carolina Alliance
It's Time to Write Women Into the Constitution!
Every two years, the ERA-NC Alliance reaches out to EVERY North Carolina candidate running for Congress and the General Assembly to determine their support for the Equal Rights Amendment. We send out letters with postage-paid return postcards to each candidate, and follow up with phone calls as much as possible.
A ‘yes’ means the candidate will co-sponsor and vote for the resolution to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Many candidates also returned comments with their survey.
The ERA-NC Alliance and its partners are outraged that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to determine that most fundamental human right of bodily autonomy. Roe has always been the floor, not the ceiling, for a woman’s right to control her body, decide the size of her family and determine her future.
Removing this final federal protection of minimal abortion access will be devastating for millions of Americans, not just women. Every abortion restriction chips away or outright eradicates that basic human right — whether or not to bear a child. And we know with this decision that 26 states are set to restrict or ban abortion through trigger laws and other legislation. (See Guttmacher Institute.)
Therefore, publication and enforcement of the Equal Rights Amendment is literally a matter of life and death for women in America. Without the legal equality guaranteed by the 28th Amendment, hostile legislators will continue to not only overturn reproductive rights, but gut other laws that have brought women the current degree of equality we have. That is why in May the Alliance filed a brief in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, demanding that the Supreme Court use the ERA as the basis for its Roe decision. The court did not respond.
Justice Samuel Alito had the audacity to write that “no one, as far as we are aware, argues that the laws they enacted against abortion in the early 19th century …violated a fundamental right.” Women had no fundamental rights in the early 19th century, not even a vote.
Women have been denied autonomy over their bodies, indeed their own lives, for centuries. It has only been in the last 50-plus years that women have been able to serve on juries, get credit, apply for and get most jobs, earn a living wage and control when and if they have children. And that has been due, in part, to Roe v. Wade.
As the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “The argument … whether or not to bear a child … is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. And when the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices.”
Our founding mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment knew 100 years ago that women must have full constitutional equality because of unequal and unjust laws that impact mothers and potential mothers.
Abortion is the battle. Equality of rights is the war.
Signed,
ERA-NC Alliance
League of Women Voters of North Carolina
American Association of University Women NC
North Carolina National Organization for Women (NOW)
Business & Professional Women NC
WomenNC
Ratify ERA-NC
Charlotte Women’s Movement
YWCA of Asheville
Women’s Forum of North Carolina
NC Women United
Women AdvaNCe
Take action! The ERA-NC Alliance urges everyone to immediately ask Christopher Schroeder, left, the newly appointed Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Office of Legal Counsel, to rescind the 2020 memo to the National Archivist. That memo, sent during U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr’s tenure, effectively stopped National Archivist David Ferriero from publishing the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The ERA met all constitutional requirements when Virginia became the 38th and final state needed to ratify on January 27, 2020.
Several members of the ERA-NC Alliance attended the ongoing protest at the U.S. Department of Justice to encourage Attorney General Merrick Garland to remove former AG Bill Barr’s memo blocking the national archivist from publishing the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Here are a few photos from our days standing sentinel at the DOJ:
ERA-NC Alliance to stand vigil June 29-30 in D.C.
to protest AG Garland’s inaction on women’s rights
Washington, D.C. — Frustrated by Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden’s inaction on the long-awaited Equal Rights Amendment, members of the ERA-NC Alliance will stand vigil June 29 and 30 as Silent Sentinels outside the Department of Justice in protest. National organizers Equal Means Equal, which began the vigil June 10, have vowed to continue until Garland and Biden act on the ERA. Advocates nationwide have joined the vigil.
Garland has failed to order National Archivist David Ferriero to accept Virginia’s ratification of the ERA and to publish the ERA as the 28th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The ERA-NC Alliance is celebrating the bipartisan U.S. House vote today at 1:58 p.m. on House Joint Resolution 17 to lift the arbitrary time limit on the Equal Rights Amendment. The final vote was 222 to 204, with four Republicans and 218 Democrats voting yes. It is now up to the U.S. Senate to take up the companion bill, Senate Joint Resolution 1.
Bills have been filed in both the House and Senate on January 27th for the state to ratify the amendment!
HOUSE BILL 8: https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/2021/H8
SENATE BILL 15: https://www.ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/2021/S15
Please call or email your legislators right away! There’s a very short window for them to co-sponsor the bill: just 24 hours in the Senate and 48 in the House.
North Carolina made the national news in US News after yesterday’s press conference on the planned re-introduction of ratification bills for the Equal Rights Amendment in the NC General Assembly! Here are links to a few of the articles, we are getting noticed across the country:
https://www.usnews.com/news/
https://www.newsobserver.com/
https://thedailyrecord.com/
https://www.
https://www.stamfordadvocate.
https://apnews.com/
NC will try once again to ratify the (ERA) Equal Rights Amendment, WXII
Thanks to all the Senators and Representatives who have signed on as sponsors and co-sponsors. Let’s work to make N.C. the second Southern state to ratify the ERA!
Lori Bunton
Co-President, ERA-NC Alliance