[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 70 (Wednesday, April 26, 2023)] [Senate] [Pages S1370-S1377] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Date: 2023-04-26
Chamber: SENATE
Mr. DURBIN: I thank my colleague from Minnesota, and I especially thank my colleague from Maryland. The Senator from Maryland has been working on this issue for a long time.  Ben, thank you for your leadership, I thank Lisa Murkowski for making it a bipartisan effort. I have a good speech here, but I want to tell you a story. The story goes back to my graduation from law school and the first job I ever had. I was working for the Lieutenant Governor of the State of Illinois--a man named Paul Simon, who went on to be elected to Congress and to the U.S. Senate. Simon, as the Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, presided over the Illinois State Senate. We had met one another. He said he was going to offer me a job when I graduated from law school, and lo and behold, I became parliamentarian of the Illinois State Senate. I was fresh out of law school. I skipped my graduation ceremony because I desperately needed some money to pay off some bills. I started working in Springfield, IL, as the parliamentarian of the State senate. Simon mistakenly believed that there was a course in law school called parliamentary law. There wasn't. I had to learn it by just reading the rule book over and over again until it became familiar, but eventually I was pretty good at it. I needed to be because we had a big debate going on in Springfield, IL, in the early 1970s about something called the Equal Rights Amendment. It was different than the debate in many State capitols because there was a real confrontation. There was no party identity behind or for the Equal Rights Amendment. Some Republicans supported it, and many Democrats supported it, but there was opposition in both parties too. What fired up the troops in that particular debate was the presence of a woman from Alton, IL, named Phyllis Schlafly, who was leading the national effort to stop the Equal Rights Amendment. I reflect on that this evening because I remember what she used to say: If you pass the Equal Rights Amendment, men and women are going to use the same bathrooms. Not only that, women are going to be forced to fight in combat in the military. They will be drafted, and they will all be fighting in the military. I look back on those arguments now and say: Was that it? Was it really that the debate on the equality of women in America came down to those two issues? I thought of it the other day when I went to a school that I was visiting that had a same-gender restroom. It was a single restroom, but either gender could use it. I thought, Phyllis Schlafly's dream came true in that we are sharing the same restrooms in some places. When it comes to combat in the military, many women across the United States fought for that right to do so and have served our country honorably. But those were the arguments and the differences of the day which led to the debate and led to Illinois's not ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. That didn't happen until very recently. We had a hearing on this, as the Presiding Officer knows, in the Senate's Judiciary Committee, and I listened to the critics of the Equal Rights Amendment today. I didn't hear anything about same-sex restrooms and nothing about combat in the military, but one lady raised the prospect that if we pass the Equal Rights Amendment, it would ruin her daughter's field hockey team in high school because there may be some transgender individuals wanting to play on her daughter's team. I thought to myself, so now it has come to that. It is no longer restrooms or combat pay; it is a question of field hockey for young ladies. Well, I know that is an important part of their lives, and she told us as much, but when I reflect on what the reality of this amendment does, it seems that those things pale in comparison. The language of it is so expressed and so clear that most people in the United States really would be surprised to know it is not already in the Constitution: no discrimination against people on the basis of sex. Most people assume that is a fact, but it is not. We have to do something about it. Tonight, we are seeing the Senate at its best--a bipartisan effort on the floor of the U.S. Senate to finally make this right by America. The Equal Rights Amendment is literally a century in the making, and over the years, generations of Americans have done their part to push it forward. They have marched on Washington, and they have met with Congressmen and Senators. As of 2020, they crossed a crucial threshold: the ratification of the ERA in 38 States. That is the exact number of States needed to certify it as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. So now it is time for lawmakers in Congress to do our part in supporting the ERA. We need to clear a path for equality, and this proposal--this bipartisan proposal from Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska--is our chance to do it. It will remove the arbitrary deadline Congress imposed on the ERA ratification more than 50 years ago, and removing that deadline has never been more important. As we learned over the past year, there is no room for uncertainty when it comes to protecting equal rights. Right now, women all across America are living with the reality that their fundamental freedoms are under attack. In the months since the disastrous Dobbs decision, millions of Americans have been robbed of their reproductive rights. Activist judges and far-right politicians have replaced the will of the people and the expertise of medical professionals with their own radical beliefs. Women living in States like Texas, Oklahoma, and most recently Florida and North Dakota have fewer rights today than their parents and grandparents did decades ago. All of this chaos and confusion is jeopardizing the lives of women and upending our healthcare system. We had another hearing today. There was testimony in that hearing by a young lady from Texas who went through an awful ordeal at the end of a pregnancy--a pregnancy which she wanted desperately. It was her first child. It would have been her first daughter, and Willow was the name she had given her. Then, late in the pregnancy, complications arose. Willow, unfortunately, couldn't be born, and the mother almost died while waiting to comply with the new Texas law on abortion.  I am going to remember that testimony for a long time. Without ERA protections, even basic rights like reproduction are on the chopping block. We need protection against discrimination in the workplace, in the classroom, even in the courtroom. Unless women's rights are explicitly protected under the Constitution, there is nothing stopping the rightwing majority on the Court from ripping them away. That is why Congress must restore and protect women's rights in all facets of life. We can do it this week by clearing the way and finally enshrining gender equality in the Constitution. I had the honor of presiding over a hearing on this very proposal in the Senate Judiciary Committee several weeks ago. During that hearing, we heard from a young woman whose name was Thursday Williams--a first- generation American, a board member of the ERA Coalition, and a senior at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Ms. Williams is planning on attending law school after she graduates from college. She says she developed a passion for the law when she ``fell in love with the U.S. Constitution in high school.'' In her words:  What I love the most about the Constitution is how brilliantly it was designed to adapt to the changing needs of its people, and, today, we deserve a Constitution that guarantees equality regardless of sex, a Constitution that we can use as a tool to fight discrimination.  That was her testimony. Ms. Williams concluded by asking members of the committee a question. It is a question I would like to now ask every Member of the Senate: How can we be the beacon of freedom and democracy we claim to be if we do not declare that sex discrimination contradicts the American dream? That was Thursday Williams' question to the Senate Judiciary Committee. It is my question to the Senate on her behalf. If we want to live up to the promise of America, we need to protect the rights of every American. Let's start with the ERA. I yield the floor.