Is US ill-treating its children, women? (II)
In my article last Thursday (April 8, 2021) titled ‘Is US ill-treating children, women?’, I very briefly touched on gender equality in that country, self-styled ‘Home of the Free and Land of the Brave’...
That article focused on a 6-year old unnamed child who, in mid-March this year, was taken to a Juvenile Criminal Court of Law in North Carolina for allegedly plucking a tulip flower from a lawn near a public passenger bus stage.
For picking the flower in a lawn, the ‘young thing’ was charged with “causing injury to real property...” Really?
Fortunately, though, the presiding Judge let the child go free on technical grounds, saying that some legal procedures were not followed/fulfilled before the child was charged in court.
Gender equality...
I also noted in my piece that “the United States until today does not have legislation guaranteeing gender equality...”
But, being short of editorial space in that particular issue, I begged to tell the tale another day. Hence today’s tale, which is about the US having not put in place legislation in favour of gender equality and women’s rights in general...
The US is one of the world’s nations which are considered across Planet Earth this side of the Heavens above to be the leading countries in terms of Democracy and General Good Governance... Sheesh!
In a report by Reuters’ Susan Cornwell on March 17, 2021 titled ‘U.S. House passes resolution aimed at advancing Equal Rights Amendment,’ the US House of Representatives passed a legislative Bill on March 17 this year by a majority of 222 to 204 votes, aimed at advancing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) for women’s rights.
‘Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged by the United States or any State (of the US) on account of sex,’ reads ERA in part.
In effect, then, passing the Bill “removes a decades-old deadline for adopting the Equal Rights Amendment, in hopes of finally and formally protecting women’s rights in the American Constitution.”
Apparently, the US Congress approved the ERA in the early 1970s, and set a 1982 deadline for it to be enacted if and when 38 of the 50 State legislatures approve it.
In the event, that hasn’t happened about a generation post-the-1982 deadline!
We’re told “the drive for the amendment initially attracted widespread support – but fell short after a conservative backlash led by Republican activist Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016), who said “ERA would actually erode women’s standing – and lead to homosexual marriages, women-in-combat, government-funded abortions and loss of alimony.”
Anyway, Virginia became the 38th State to vote for the Amendment – and went to Federal Court in Washington-DC, supported by the Illinois and Nevada States – to have ERA formally declared valid.
However, the House-approved amendment needs a “supermajority” of 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to become Law.
Currently, Senate membership is 50-50 between the two powerful political parties: President Biden’s Democrats and immediate-past President Donald Tramp’s Republicans.
It’s going to be an uphill battle in both the Senate and the US Court system, perhaps going all the way to the US Supreme Court for a final decision. Whatever is the case, it remains a fact that gender equality and women’s rights in the US in general is still a fantasy in that self-styled Home of the Free and Land of the Brave... What a discombobulation. Tears!
