ERA WOULD GO TOO FAR IN GIVING CONGRESS UNSPECIFIED POWERS TO ENFORCE ITS PROVISIONS

A group of state lawmakers, all Democrats, proposes to resurrect a museum piece of 1970s liberalism: the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The group was joined in support by Gov. Mel Carnahan, his wife Jean and Secretary of State Bekki Cook. The ERA is a bad idea whose time came and went nearly a generation ago.

It is widely believed that the ERA died in 1982 when it fell three states short of the 38 necessary for ratification within a deadline set by Congress. Early this month, this group held a rally to declare that Missouri, one of 15 states where ERA hasn't been approved, should lead the way to ratification. Years ago, the Missouri House approved the ERA before it died in the Senate in the face of stiff bipartisan opposition.

Says state Rep. Gracia Backer, D-New Bloomfield, a key sponsor: "It is not about radical women who want to overturn our society. It is not about abortions. It is not about same-sex marriages. It is not about women in foxholes. It is not about burning certain undergarments. It is about simple justice."

Nice try. It may indeed be that the motives of certain ERA supporters don't encompass any of these bold projects. Whatever the motives and purposes of these supporters may or may not be is quite beside the point. The reason is that the ERA contains what drafters call an enabling clause. That clause reads: "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." Far too many members of Congress, to say nothing of activist liberal judges, see such a clause as a warrant for reading into the Constitution literally anything they might dream up out of whole cloth, whether grounded in law or not. This is the very antithesis of constitutional law. It is also an invitation to one grave imposition after another by an all-powerful federal government on the states. Everyone who wants to hand more power to unelected judges should be for the ERA.

The all-Democratic group of supporters was answered by a dozen Republican female House members who oppose the ERA. These women lawmakers argue that ratifying the ERA could lead to legalization of same-sex marriages and taxpayer-funded abortions. These opponents also note, correctly, that there are already plenty of laws on the books to protect women's rights, plus the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection. "The 14th Amendment has been successfully been used to protect the rights of women and will continue to do so. The ERA isn't needed to do this."

Indeed, even in Backer's words defending the amendment we find reason for pause. She says it isn't about taxpayer-funding of abortions, or same-sex marriages, or women in combat. All three were mentioned by opponents a generation ago as reasons to oppose the amendment. ERA supporters decried these allegations as the product of fevered imaginations, not to be taken seriously. But a generation later, liberal lawmakers, judges and activists ceaselessly push all three on Americans and this without an ERA on the books. Desert Storm was the first conflict in American history that saw our female soldiers actually taken by the enemy and held as prisoners of war. Imagine what these same activists and judges would do with the fertile ground that would be seeded by passage of ERA.

No one in public life today is debate and settled these questions more than 20 years ago.