This Week in the House: Democrats Desperate to Save Abortion on Demand

The desperation of the abortion industry and the politicians whose campaigns it funds was on full display as the House voted Thursday to remove the decades-old deadline for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

The House voted to approve H.J.Res. 79, 232-183, with five Republicans joining Democrats, in what was largely a symbolic gesture.

Democrats went ahead with the vote, though without the blessing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who affirmed that the deadline to ratify the ERA has expired.

“I would like to see a new beginning,” Ginsburg told an audience at Georgetown University Law Center. “I’d like it to start over.”

Vox described Ginsburg’s comment as a “fatal blow” to the ERA.

Leftwing feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women cooked up a narrative for the vote that the timeline for the ERA was “artificial”:

The Eagle Forum explained why the ERA is not needed:

The ERA doesn’t give women any more protections than they already have. The 14th Amendment, as well as many other laws like Title IX, the Equal Opportunity Act of 1963, the Equal Employment Opportunity Discrimination Act, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Equal Pay Act, provide women equal rights. Removing the 7-year ratification deadline doesn’t bring the Amendment any closer to ratification. For 24 of the states that passed the ERA, their votes to ratify the ERA explicitly expired on March 22, 1979. To add to this, in 1982, the Supreme Court ruled, in NOW v. Idaho, that ERA failed ratification and was effectively dead.

If women’s equal rights are already protected, what could Democrats hope to reap from removing the ERA’s deadline?

“Under the guise of ‘women’s equality,’ the ERA will remove every distinction between the sexes and enshrine abortion into the Constitution,” said Eagle Forum President Eunie Smith. “The ERA is not about protecting women. The Senate will be wise to not consider the measure.”

State ERAs – for example, those passed in Connecticut and New Mexico –were subsequently used to overturn abortion limits and mandate taxpayer funding of the procedure, since any restrictions on abortion were reasoned to be specific to females alone and, therefore, a form of sex discrimination.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said the passage of the ERA bill in the House shows the “desperation of the abortion lobby as they attempt to tamper with a legal deadline to force abortion into the law.”

The ERA bill was introduced in November, and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) subsequently delivered an opinion last month that asserted the Amendment is dead and cannot be revived by Congress.

“As Justice Ginsburg herself has noted, the ERA has failed and needs to go back to the drawing board,” Hawkins said. “It would actually destroy a framework of laws designed specifically for women and lay the foundation for abortion in the Constitution – harming women born and preborn.”

On Wednesday, the House Committee on Energy & Commerce also held a hearing on H.R. 2975, the Women’s Health Protection Act, a measure that would mandate abortion on demand and override all current federal and state laws regarding abortion.

Tom McClusky, president of March for Life Action, said in a statement the approval of the ERA bill in the House and the hearing on the Women’s Health Protection Act highlight how extreme Democrat lawmakers have become on the issue of abortion on demand.

“Rep. Judy Chu’s (D-CA) bill would codify Roe, effectively making abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy a federal law,” he warned, adding the legislation “would go even further than the ERA, not only doing away with any existing laws that limit abortion but also preventing pro-life legislators from introducing new ones.”

While Democrats worked desperately to save abortion this week, Republican lawmakers and officials focused, instead, on the dignity of unborn human life.

On Tuesday, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) led a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivor Protection Act, a measure that would ensure babies who survive abortion are met with appropriate medical care, the same form of care that any premature baby born at the same age would receive from medical professionals.

Sasse introduced the Born-Alive Act in January 2019. The following month, Senate Democrats voted to block the bill:

Meanwhile, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill, Jr. led a burial service Wednesday in South Bend, Indiana, for the 2,411 aborted babies whose remains were found in the Illinois garage of deceased abortionist Ulrich Klopfer.

Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, led the funeral service at which the abortion victims were laid to rest.

“As a congressional panel convened in Washington to discuss a radical abortion law pushed by the Democrats, 200 people gathered in Indiana to bury thousands of tiny broken bodies,” Pavone reflected on the service in a statement sent to Breitbart News. “These babies had their lives stolen by abortion, and their dignity violated by an abortionist who kept their bodies for reasons we will never know.”

As the week draws to a close, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is scheduling back-to-back votes this month on both the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

“We thank President Trump for continually calling out the extremists blocking the will of the people, and for calling on Congress during his State of the Union address to finally end late-term abortions,” said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “We are so grateful to Leader Mitch McConnell, Chairman Lindsey Graham, and Sen. Ben Sasse for their steadfast pro-life leadership in the U.S. Senate.”