1/7) On the floor of the House of Representatives on February 13, 2020, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "This [the ERA] has nothing to do with the abortion issue." This week arrived yet another proof that Pelosi's statement was utterly false.
#eranow
2/7) On 10-13-21, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers filed a brief at the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, in a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the state law that limits Medicaid funding of abortion to cases of life of the mother, rape, and incest.
3/7) In the new brief, Planned Parenthood and its allied attorneys at the Women's Law Project argue that the state law violates the Pennsylvania ERA, adopted in 1971 (when Pennsylvania law prohibited abortion, except to save the life of the mother).
4/7) They assert that a policy that excludes a sex-linked procedure (abortion) is sex-based discrimination and absolutely impermissible under the state ERA (while implying that the same would be true at the federal level, if there were a federal ERA).
5/7) They urge the Penn. Supreme Court to follow the lead of the New Mexico Supreme Court, which in 1998 unanimously ruled that the NM ERA did not permit exclusion of abortion from the state Medicaid program. Both the PA and NM ERAs are very similar to the 1972 federal ERA.
6/7) A 1985 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling (Fischer) that upheld the same state law, and rejected the ERA-abortion argument, was wrong, is old hat, and should be overturned, the abortion providers assert.
7/7) The case is Allegheny Reproductive Health Center vs. Pennsylvania Dept. of Human Services.
For more illustrations of the long-evident ERA-abortion connection (which until recently was denied by many ERA proponents), see our previous thread:
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