Many states have passed laws which require unpaid maternity leave for female employees, but few have passed mandatory paternity leave for men. This is unfair – both parents should have access to parental leave, and one could legitimately argue that a certain amount of maternity/paternity leave should be paid, and if ratification of the ERA can help all of this happen, then that would be a positive outcome for actual gender equality. In addition, the Affordable Care Act mandated that insurance policies require birth control coverage for women. If ratifying the ERA were to mean that male birth control methods such as condoms should be covered as well, that would be a good thing – men and women both deserve contraceptive coverage, and condoms, like many forms of female contraception, provide medical benefits beyond just pregnancy prevention. I have never agreed with the claim that prenatal care is just for women because it is beneficial for both the mother and her baby, which could be of any gender. Pregnancy is a medical condition that only women experience – but every person is a former fetus. Prenatal care is thus not as gender exclusive to women as many people claim, and the passage of the ERA should not undermine health care coverage of prenatal care on gender bias grounds.
The fact that even a relatively liberal state like Minnesota discovered just this year that it still does not have a statute on the books that makes sexual blackmail a crime indicates that 14th Amendment protections are not enough to ensure equality for women. Only the full addition of the ERA would put constitutional force behind making sure laws that address the types of discrimination and crimes that disproportionally affect women get written, passed, and consistently enforced.
Finally, the argument that it would be a bad thing for the ERA to extend full gender rights to transgender persons is simply discriminatory, and negates the claim that women are already protected under the 14th Amendment. Transgender people, like “regular” people, are “persons,” and thus should be protected under the 14th Amendment from discrimination, just like women supposedly are. Saying that female persons are protected as “persons” but that transgender persons are not is blatant discrimination based on personal bias regarding transgender persons – that already should not be allowed under an inclusive reading of the 14th Amendment. Unless those who oppose transgender rights under the 14th Amendment would deny the personhood of transgender individuals? That would not just be unconstitutional, but also unethical and inhumane.
Neither the 14th Amendment nor the ERA say anything to define “male” and “female.” The 14th Amendment does not mention sex or gender at all and limits itself to the term “person(s)” – it was subsequent legislation and court decisions that extended and applied the 14th Amendment to women, which even many opponents of the ERA say is a good thing. Similarly, the ERA limits itself to the term “sex.” It does not make judgements as to how to determine a person’s sex or gender – it leaves those types of details to legislatures to legislate and courts to interpret according to scientific and other factors. This means that as has been the case for every Amendment ever added to the U.S. Constitution, the ERA itself will not be the final word in regard to what it means for anyone it may or may not affect. Voters, states, Congress, and the courts will all weigh in over time.
The ERA is simply meant to state explicitly within the Constitution itself that no one should be discriminated against on the basis of sex. If we felt the need to state that definitively within the 13th Amendment regarding “race” and “previous condition of servitude” to make it abundantly clear, then we should do so in regard to “sex” as well since women were also excluded from full citizenship rights in the original Constitution ratified in 1787. As Amanda Gorman said in her January 2021 inauguration ceremony poem, America is “unfinished.” So is its Constitution, and full ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and inclusion within it is a necessary step towards making the U.S. Constitution more complete.\
https://time.com/5657997/equal-rights-amendment-history/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/equal-rights-amendment-explained
https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=592919&p=4172365
https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/era-ratification-map
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1991/91-744
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/full-text