In a rather strange move, one of outgoing President Joe Biden’s final acts as president was to throw his support behind the Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment, which was passed by Congress in the 1970s, would guarantee men and women equal rights under the law.
Great, right? Not so fast. In order to become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, 38 of the 50 states needed to ratify it. This didn’t happen until 2020, nearly 50 years after it was first proposed and meaning it missed deadlines set by Congress to ratify it all those years ago. And some of the states who already ratified it back then, like Nebraska and Idaho, say they want to rescind their support now, complicating an already very complicated matter.
On the last Friday of his presidency, Biden decided to take a stand, saying “the Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land.” However, he didn’t do anything but state that this was his belief, and didn’t put any legislative and executive powers behind it.
This rather toothless endorsement in the last days of his presidency, therefore, is unlikely to make any impact. In fact, the National Archives said the same day that the legal discrepancies around ratification had not changed, according to the AP.
Such an important milestone for women being treated in this manner left advocates cold.
“I wish it was done sooner because it’s so important,” Christian F. Nunes, leader of the National Organization for Women, told the AP. “The fact that it’s getting done now is more important than the fact that it took long, but we can’t continue to delay women’s protections and equal rights in this country.”
January 20: Government website providing reproductive rights information goes offline.
Trump’s Inauguration Day was a true smorgasbord of misogynistic actions. Here’s the first. On the same day the 45th president became our 47th president, the federal website established to help Americans access abortion care and reproductive information stopped working.
The website, which according to CBS News was established by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2022, was intended to help bridge the gap created by the overturning of Roe v. Wade that same year.
"While Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion remains legal in many states, and other reproductive health care services remain protected by law,” it read.
Thus far, the Trump administration hasn’t commented on the website’s status.
Jan. 20: Trump’s executive order establishing two biological sexes also codifies fetal personhood.
On the first day of his new administration, Trump also signed a devastatingly cruel executive action that targeted trans Americans. Under the guise of “protecting women,” the order states that there are “two sexes, male and female.” The order states that these sexes “mean a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.”
While this action is horrifying enough for what it implies for trans rights, journalist Jessica Valenti noted that the way the order is worded also has a chilling implication. By referring to an embryo as a “person” at “conception,” Trump is [using rhetoric](https://newrepublic.com/post/190506/donald-trump-fetal-personhood-executive-order){: target="_blank"} that aligns with the concept of “fetal personhood,” language used in extreme anti-abortion legislation that gives fetuses the same rights as any other person under the law.
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