By Robert Marshall

At a June 2018 shadow hearing on the dead ERA, Democrat Congressman Jerrold Nadler, who now chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said, “We cannot trust the Supreme Court not to go back … what the Supreme Court giveth, the Supreme Court can taketh away … we are worried now that another Supreme Court nominee … might overturn Roe v. Wade.” (The Roe Supreme Court decision abolished all state laws protecting the lives of children before birth.)

ERA supporters are working in 13 state legislatures, including Virginia’s, which never ratified the ERA before its legal deadline expired some 40 years ago. If Virginia (or any of the 13 states) “ratifies” the non-pending ERA in 2019, Congressman Nadler’s Democrat majority House Judiciary Committee will “credential” the effort as constitutional.

Chairman Nadler is one of 206 congressmen and senators, who co-sponsored measures last session to “revive” the original 40-plus-year-old ratifications from 35 states by a simple majority vote in Congress.

Imagine the New England Patriots win the AFL Conference again and the NFL commissioners allow the Patriots to start the 2019 Super Bowl keeping the 33 points they scored in their 2018 loss to Philadelphia. That’s essentially the ERA advocates’ game plan.

ERA supporters absolutely know the ratification deadline ran out either in 1979, or for sure in 1982, because they had Congress pass a 3-plus-year extension, and they reintroduced the ERA in Congress ever since the ERA failed to pass. President Jimmy Carter wrote to House Judiciary Chairman Peter Rodino (R-NJ) on July 12, 1978, “I am hopeful that ERA will be ratified before the present deadline expires.”

President Carter’s Justice Department explained Congress could vote for an extension by a majority vote only if the “extension” passed before the original March 22, 1979 deadline expired. Congress did extend the deadline before the initial deadline expired:

“Certainly, if a time limit had expired before an intervening Congress has taken action to extend that limit, a strong argument could be made that the only constitutional means of reviving a proposed amendment would be to propose the amendment anew by two-thirds vote of each House … that failure of ratification by three-fourths of the States within the fixed time limit period would probably require the resubmission of the amendment by a future Congress. …”

Congressional efforts to amend the ERA to: protect women’s privacy in schools, dorms and prisons; exempt women from the draft and front line ground combat; protect the tax exempt status of religious schools; and make the ERA abortion-neutral instead of mandating tax-funded abortions and ending all abortion regulations. All of these efforts failed. And, since ERA advocates want “sex” treated like “race” in law, churches with male-only clergy would lose their tax-exempt status.

If you don’t want your daughters and granddaughters drafted, don’t want to pay for abortion, and believe women are equal but not identical to men and deserve privacy, write your state delegate and state senator today to vote against the ERA.

Robert Marshall was a 26-year member of the House of Delegates, and he is author of “Reclaiming the Republic: How Christians and Other Conservatives Can Win Back America.”