Lisa Ann Walter: My Lifelong Fight to Pass the Equal Rights Act

However, recently there have been disturbing losses: In 2000, the US Supreme Court invalidated portions of the Violence Against Women Act (some of which have since been restored). Dozens of antichoice (“heartbeat”) laws have been enacted across the country since 2016, became “trigger laws” heralding the frightening prospect that Roe v. Wade would be overturned. Then, of course, in the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court case, that moment came, along with the repeal of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, determining that the US Constitution does not confer any right to abortion, returning those regulations to the states.

And we see how that’s going. In 2023, Groff v. DeJoy allowed the denial of our civil rights based on exemptions for religious beliefs.

Why is all this even more important now? When folks wonder, “Well, don’t you have equal rights, basically?” keep in mind that if the ERA had been published in 2022 as the 28th amendment, the Dobbs decision could’ve been different.

This is how personal these policies get: Years ago, I was on location for a project, and I was unaware that I was several months pregnant. I hadn’t missed a period, no morning sickness. In this project, I was doing some light stunts—including falls and so on. Late one night I started bleeding. A lot. I stood up and a river of blood fell out of me. I was alone. I was terrified. When the bleeding didn’t stop, I went to the hospital. After the shock of learning I was pregnant…and miscarrying…followed by an entire night of painful contractions, I was told that although my body had spontaneously ended the pregnancy, there was still tissue in my uterus. Left there, it could become life-threatening and so, I was told, they had to do a D&C.

For those of you unfamiliar with medical jargon, a dilation and curettage is the same procedure that is used in abortion. In this case, it would be used to prevent me from hemorrhaging to death, the way women used to do quite often due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth.

Several things are important here. First, I already had a living child, and so miscarrying was traumatic for several reasons, not the least of which was knowing I was losing a baby. Second, had this happened today, on location in a state with these draconian antichoice laws, not only could I have been made to wait until I was closer to death—alone and terrified—but the state might have had the option to charge me with second-degree manslaughter for being complicit in the incident since I was unknowingly engaging in activities that could endanger pregnancy.