Why We Shouldn’t Ratify The Equal Rights Amendment Essay Example

The Equal Rights Amendment is something that shouldn’t be ratified. It has been the talk for about more than four decades. What many people don’t realize is that people change their minds as they get older and new generations come. There should be a vote for this in every state until 38 states ratified it because each state may change their minds when it comes to something as important as this. The ERA would not make both men and women equal as it would like you to think. This amendment has been rejected time and time again and the government still ignore the time they were given to get the amendment ratified. And all of this would just be giving the federal government more power on our lives.

 In March 1979 was the deadline that was made for 38 states to ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. Then when they were not able to accomplish this then they were given an extended time for states to ratified the amendment and even with this extended time no states passed the ERA. And by Congress adding this extended time they were doing something that was unconstitutional can go to prove that the government is trying to to push us into getting this amendment that can in their case give them more power than they already have. They try to make it seem that even if they add time it would lead to uncertainty and here it says “Congress granted an extension to 1982 which was ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court in 1981 and the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. On October 4, 1982, the Court dismissed it as moot”. By them knowing it would lead to uncertainty why would they just let it happen. Also times have changed and people think differently from what they thought in the 70’s, 80’s so by them keeping a vote that some people may no agree with to this day would just seem unfair.

Many believe that once we get the equal rights amendment that both men and women will be equal and have the same things applied to each of them but this is not true. What people don’t realize is that if women wanted to get equal rights there would be an amendment like the 14th for women. What many people don’t realize is that in the equal rights amendment never do talk about women in it. People have to really think about how this would affect the women that are married have kids that they have to take care of and are stay at home wifes this would completely change their lives. And it will also “ …[I]t could relieve the fathers of the primary responsibility for the support of even infant children, as well as the support of the mothers of such children…” (U.S. House Judiciary Committee Report (No. 92-359, July 14, 1971).  This just goes to tell us that it's just going to give the the men a more advantage and leave women to struggle more with this.

For the past years this amendment has been rejected multiple times but the government doesn't get the idea that maybe this is not what people may want. Illinois has been a state that have voted the amendment down many times from 1972 to 1982 after understanding the real intentions of the equal rights amendment. For example “ Five states rescinded their passage of ERA: Nebraska – 1973, Tennessee – 1974, Idaho – 1977, Kentucky – 1978, South Dakota – 1979.” This just goes to show us that people can really see what ERA is about and don't believe in it. What the government needs to realize is that once states started to take back their vote they should have just dropped that amendment.