Weekly Digest |
Letter from an Editor | January 15, 2022 |
Dear John,
Next week, on January 22, we will celebrate the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It’s been nearly half a century since the 1973 Supreme Court decision affirmed the constitutional right to abortion—a right the Court again affirmed in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision. And yet, we face the very real possibility that Roe’s 49th birthday may be its last.
That the loss of our abortion rights and the slow backsliding of our democracy have come hand in hand is no coincidence. On the most recent episode of Ms.’s podcast, “On the Issues with Michele Goodwin,” legal commentator Dahlia Lithwick connects the dots between the January 6 insurrection and Texas’s S.B. 8 abortion ban, saying both represent instances of government-sanctioned vigilantism. “This is happening everywhere, this sort of greenlighting of the citizen as law unto themself,” Lithwick explains. “We have really seen the [Supreme] Court colluding in some of that, not least of which is blessing S.B. 8 and having no problem with a law that is essentially a vigilante bill.”
Later this month, we’re also coming up on the two-year anniversary of the vote by the Virginia legislature to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment — ensuring that the amendment passed the threshold and secured the 38 states necessary to amend the Constitution. Unfortunately, we’re still waiting for the amendment to be certified as the 28th Amendment — nearly 100 years after it was first proposed by Alice Paul and introduced in Congress.
Feminist activists and lawmakers are keeping pressure on the White House and Department of Justice to rescind the Trump administration’s legal opinion that is stalling the amendment’s ratification. Earlier this week, the attorneys general of Nevada, Illinois and Virginia — the last three states to have ratified the ERA — filed their opening brief in a case that aims to force the U.S. archivist David S. Ferriero to publish the ERA in the Constitution.
“The ERA has been properly ratified by the states and any attempt to prevent its inclusion in the Constitution is without basis in law,” said Virginia AG Herring. “The Equal Rights Amendment will finally ensure true equality in our nation’s foundational document and correct an injustice of historic proportions.”
We agree with AG Herring — the fact that women still do not have constitutional equality is indeed an “injustice of historic proportions.” And we won’t stop till it’s rectified.
For equality,
Kathy Spillar
Executive Editor
P.S. — On Monday, we honor the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. At a moment in which the right to vote for millions of Americans is more imperiled than ever, we’re joining hundreds of national, state and local grassroots civil rights organizations in calling on the Senate to bypass the filibuster and pass voting rights legislation ahead of the 2022 midterms. The fate of our very democracy depends on it.
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Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin on
It’s been just over a year since armed insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an effort to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential win. In the year since, what have we learned about the attack, and what it says about the current state of American democracy? It’s also been a year of public health crises, political crises, and more—and we’re going to be breaking it all down.
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