I'm Sorry... If We Are To Go Down This Syrian/ISIS Road To War... Reinstitute The Draft

[pnwmom]

77. In the 70's we had a huge effort to pass an amendment to the Constitution

mandating equal rights for women, and it failed. Since then, the Supreme Court has continued to use the lack of such an amendment in its rulings.

The ERA was passed by Congress in 1972 and it was sent to the states for ratification. Even after an extension was granted, it failed to get the necessary approval from legislatures of 38 states, and the ERA died in 1982.

Women are not yet equal citizens of the U.S.

P.S. Thanks for asking the question. According to one poll, 72% of Americans mistakenly think the Constitution already includes the ERA. So you're not alone.

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/misc/ERA_why_we_need.pdf

We need the ERA because the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause has never been interpreted to guarantee equal rights in the same way the Equal Rights Amendment would. The 14th Amendment has been applied to sex discrimination only since 1971. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said in September 2010 that he does not think the Constitution prohibits sex discrimination.

 We need the ERA because we need a clearer and stricter judicial standard for deciding cases of sex discrimination. Sex discrimination should get the highest level of strict judicial scrutiny, just as race discrimination does, but it currently receives only a heightened level of intermediate scrutiny.

 We need the ERA because we need its protection against a rollback of the significant advances in women’s rights achieved over the past half century. With the ERA in the Constitution, it would be more difficult for lawmakers and judges to reverse progress already made in eliminating sex discrimination.

SNIP

 An April 2012 poll for Daily Kos and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) found that 91% of Americans believe that men and women should have equal rights affirmed by the Constitution. A 2001 Opinion Research Corporation poll showed that 96% of U.S. adults believed male and female citizens should have equal rights, and 88% said the Constitution should guarantee equal rights, but 72% of the respondents mistakenly assumed that the Constitution already includes such a guarantee.