SCREEN CAPTURE: Homepage, a Minnesota organization, https://eramn.org/
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That page endorses a particular draft amendment to Minnesota's Constitution, per
https://eramn.org/2023-minnesota-state-era-bill/ -
ERA Minnesota worked with legislators to draft a bill to present to the Minnesota House and Minnesota Senate in the 2023 – 2024 legislative session.Following the success of Nevada’s Universal Equal Rights Amendment, we adopted similar language to help truly ensure legal equality—with no qualifiers.
2024 PROPOSED Robust ERA Language for SF37:
All persons shall be guaranteed equal rights under the laws of this state. The state shall not discriminate against any person in intent or effect on account
of race, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, or sex, including but not limited to pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and reproductive freedom, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.
Italics are preface, plain text is bill text - why the paragraph is formatted chopped up is unclear, but it's their page to format.
First problem, non-citizens are persons and a national debate exists on whether a fetus or embryo is a person and this THING begs the question entirely.
Children are persons, so should they vote? Incarcerated felons are persons. What meaning does "equal protection" then have? That right to life thing about fetuses is an important abortion question. Can the fetal right to a "pregnancy outcome" without any "interference" be honored along with a woman's desire to abort?
Now, an unwanted pregnancy, the condom tears or a gentleman is assured a sex partner is practicing contraception when she is not (both do happen); so that gentleman is a "person," who may not want ongoing financial responsibility for a child, pregnant woman wanting no abortion - vs agrees to an abortion.
Three pregnancy outcomes come to mind - abortion before full term, full term with adoption, full term, woman not wanting to put child up for adoption.
Men who impregnate would be treated unequally if the woman impregnated wants to keep the born child, relatively to treatment of those equally positioned men but where the impregnated woman picks one of the two other options - So inequality, unless a woman wanting a full term also assumes full financial responsibility for her choosing with the man having no voice in choice.
That's not equality among men facing different outcomes of pregnancy, quite clearly so. The woman does have the thing in her body, but the man "put" it there, so what is equal choice?
There is a gap in things; the controversy of pre-delivery personhood being the biggest gap, the unequal treatment of two men, given the whim of two women thing is another. Clearly current law in general says fetus not equal to "person." In general. And men responsible for causing a pregnancy currently are disallowed any remedy about abort/ adopt/ finance. But this proposal is a change in the very fabric of the Constitution, if put to a popular vote and adopted, a change in law in its most fundamental embodiment.
It's not thought out, and, moreover ageism is not barred by this "Equal Rights Amendment."
People should think before they shoot a loaded, cocked gun.
___________UPDATE____________
Now, with this proposal and while the nation has a fully volunteer standing Army, the question of conscription in the future should be thought over. With pregnancy and pregnancy outcome being non factors for inequality, women, pregnant or not, should be equally at risk of being drafted out of graduate school as men. It's only fair, to be equal. With women having roles in service decided, draft equality seems a part of the "Amendment" being proposed. Along with men and women having an "equal" right to terminate a pregnancy one or the other does not want. Along with is a fetus a person. Going to the polls with some mess short of having thought things out seems - hard to phrase it otherwise - dumb.
A sentence - Assertion an embryo or fetus is a person fails as compelling state interest in determining any outcome of a pregnancy.
That would clean up one difficulty. As would the sentence - Pregnant women choosing against adoption or abortion when the impregnating man wants no financial burden of child rearing, will in such situation be singly responsible for financing the imposing of their sole decision; should they do so.
With mandated equality in the job market, unlike old days, there is cause to not hold men responsible for a pregnancy where it takes two to tango, but only one gets a pregnancy outcome choice. People being equal either is true, or not, but fictions and traditions seem swept up when it comes to "EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT" ENACTMENT.
So, THINK.
___________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Multiple bill drafts exist; see this link. What comes out of a conference committee, if things get there for a 2024 ballot question, is unknown until it emerges. But merging the traditional ERA thinking with attention to presently marginalized subgroups besides traditional male, pronouns he, his, him; and traditional female, pronouns she, her, and her; and running abortion language in too, seems a stretch. Especially where loose language where traditionally "citizen" and "person" had limited overlap, citizens having the more favorable universal status. Since we elected them, our legislators know best, and we await the process yielding an objection free measure pleasing to everyone.