Roe v. Wade canceled – Gloria Steinem says ERA must be law

One problem is that many of those who would support it think we already have it. So it’s not seen as the urgency or the need that it really is, especially now after the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade. And the grounds for support or opposition also vary from state to state. For example, in some states there was opposition because the insurance industry had a profit motive in beating the ERA since the actuarial tables are still segregated by gender. It could make a huge difference to them financially if it was negative to push through, so they invest money to oppose it. Even when you look at someone like Phyllis Schlafly, who said she was against it for religious reasons, she was basically a front for the insurance lobby. As I’ve said before, opinion polls have consistently proven that a large majority of American women support ERA, but state lawmakers also knew that the insurance industry, chambers of commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and other companies opposed it. lobbyists. Medicare interests alone stood to lose billions if the ERA forced it to stop charging women more for less coverage, and since this industry was largely state-regulated, it had lobbyists in every state capital. Phyllis Schlafly and her anti-feminist housewives had been brought in to cover for lawmakers who voted against the ERA anyway.

What role could ERA have in helping to curb the encroachment on women’s reproductive freedom, with roe deer to have fallen?

If democracy means anything, it means decision-making power over our own organs and it means equal decision-making power. Can men be banned from having a vasectomy? So why are women only governed in terms of our physical selves by various state laws? Well, the answer is because we have a womb. We happen to have the one thing the guys don’t have. And when you look back in history at authoritarian movements around the world, you learn that often the first thing they did was ban abortion and declare family planning a crime against the state.

The Third Reich is an example, isn’t it?

Hitler was elected, which we sometimes forget in itself. And the very next day he padlocked all the family planning clinics and declared abortion a crime against the state because obviously he was trying to create an Aryan race. Regardless of people’s motivations for wanting to restrict or eliminate the right to choose, reproductive control is the first step in authoritarian and religious authoritarian movements.

Has the Catholic Church always been opposed to abortion?

In fact, the Vatican didn’t ban abortion until the late 1860s. Before that, they actually regulated it. They said that a male fetus could be aborted up to so many weeks and a female fetus up to so many weeks longer. I think their (incorrect) reasoning was that since males were superior, a male fetus became viable faster.

So why did the Catholic Church stop allowing abortion?

Again, they weren’t just allowing abortion, they were regulator Abortion. But my understanding is that this changed when Napoleon III started decimating the French population with wars. To restore population growth, he made a deal with Pope Pius IX that if the pope banned abortion, then Napoleon III, an emperor, would lend his support to the doctrine of papal infallibility, which the pope desperately wanted. .

In other words, no more negotiations on women’s reproductive rights, even then.

Yes!

What would ERA do to strengthen women’s reproductive rights?

This would strengthen the rights around our own body. The issue of fetal rights would not arise until a fetus could survive outside the female body. Currently, the rights of the fetus apply, even though the fetus is 100% dependent on women’s heart, lungs and circulation, etc. But that wouldn’t come into play until the fetus had reached the point of viability. I mean, in a way, that’s already the kind of popular, sensible understanding, even if there are differences on the idea of ​​when viability happens.

Why did the founding fathers exclude women from the Constitution?

Women, as well as slaves and Indians. Yes, it seems we had to face the fact that they only cared about white men. The way of looking at it is that they intended to create a white patriarchy. Disenfranchising women and people of color are linked, and we can’t forget that.

Why is it urgent, in our current climate, to pass the ERA?

Well, for one thing, it’s a shame we don’t have it. I really think we should put a huge, huge poster in every airport where international travelers arrive saying: Welcome to the only democracy in the world that excludes female human beings. It’s absurd.

What do you think his chances of moving to the Senate are now?

Many legal experts think it doesn’t even have to go through the Senate. They say the National Archivist can just pass it, but so far he hasn’t. But somehow we have to do it!

Thank you, Gloria, for all you continue to do!

Thanks!