ST. LOUIS — After conservative activists spent decades building political capital and designing legal strategies to topple Roe v. Wade, liberal organizers think they have a similar decades-old ace card up their sleeve.
The most surefire way to protect a right from a court rolling it back is to enshrine it into the U.S. Constitution and make it effectively untouchable. While changing the Constitution requires a herculean political effort, most of that work has already been accomplished.
If Congress or the federal courts move to recognize the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, Democrats believe the protections granted under a revised U.S. Constitution would expand to cover reproductive healthcare procedures currently banned under several state laws.
The fight over the Equal Rights Amendment, long considered a dormant debate from the 1970s and '80s, has new life after state legislatures in Illinois, Virginia, and Nevada, ratified the clause in recent years, long after the 1982 deadline set by Congress.
"Three-fourths of states across the nation have, in fact, ratified the ERA," U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Massachusetts) said at a January news conference. "Our resolution would remove that arbitrary deadline and move this constitutional amendment forward."
Pressley and U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) launched a new Congressional Equal Rights Amendment Caucus on Capitol Hill last month. Their group argues the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment is alive and well.
"Equality is overdue," Bush said. "All that is standing in the way is some paperwork."
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined two other states to sue the National Archives and order the federal agency to attach the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In March of 2021, the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. ruled against Raoul's lawsuit and upheld the 1982 deadline Congress wrote into law. Illinois unsuccessfully appealed to the D.C. Court of Appeals.
Raoul's office has not signaled he will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and did not return emails seeking comment.
A federal judge in Texas who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump took the first step to strip the FDA approval of mifepristone, the most commonly used abortion pill in the country.
"I think women are scared right now," U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski(D-Illinois) said. "What you saw over the weekend was more of a government overreach."
The first-term Democrat sat down for an interview with 5 On Your Side Political Editor Mark Maxwell to mark her first 100 days in office.
"We need to be passing at the federal level protections to prevent a judge from weighing in on something," she said. "We need national protections for women."
Labor unions believe the ERA could unlock other rights and open pathways to reduce the gender wage gap that pays women 82 cents for every dollar a man makes, according to Pew Research.
"That's money that could be in your pocket, but it's not," Bush said. "And it's solely because of your race; it's solely because of your gender; and because you don't have equality under the U.S. constitution. We call that the sexism tax, flat out."
"Reproductive health rights. I think this goes to that issue as well," Budzinski said.
Voters in the Metro East elected Budzinski to Congress exactly 70 years after conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly ran for Congress in that same area and lost.
Schlafly's legacy political win could unravel if Congress revives ERA
Schlafly went on to lead the anti-feminist movement to defeat the ERA 41 years ago, including in statehouse demonstrations in Illinois and Missouri.
Budzinski, who says she has met with Bush on Capitol Hill, would support taking action to reactivate the ERA and finalize its passage.
"I would be supportive of that," she said. "I think the issue, though, is that elections matter. Right now we have a very narrowly divided House where the Republicans have about a five-seat majority. Whether the ERA is going to be able to come for a successful vote on the floor, I'm pretty doubtful of that.
"But under a Democratic Congress, I would hope that we'd be able to find consensus and move this forward and get this in the Constitution. I think it'd be a great step forward," she said.
Budzinski said the 41 years that have passed since the initial deadline shouldn't stop Congress from carrying the amendment across the finish line.
"It shouldn't be an obstacle. And in some ways we shouldn't even have to still be debating it," she said. "This should be just understood that a woman and a man should be able to have equal rights and protections under the law."