BY CYNTHIA RICHIE TERRELL | On Monday, May 2, Politico broke an extraordinary story that has sent the nation into disarray: an unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court majority opinion to strike down Roe v. Wade. The draft opinion holds that it is not the Court’s job to decide on the legality of abortion and that “it is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
There’s one problem with this directive: It assumes that elected officials in state legislatures are representative, but they are not.
On average women hold just 31 percent of seats in state legislatures. There are only 15 women (11 Democrats and four Republicans) who serve as president or president pro-tem of state senates, and only six women (five Democrats, one Republican) serve as speakers of statehouses.
RepresentWomen’s 2021 Gender Parity Index found that over half of states (30) receive a D grade or worse for gender balance, meaning that representation ranges between 0-25 percent for over half the country. Representation is even worse for women of color: Only 9 percent of state legislators are women of color.
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