Whose Vision of America Will Voters Choose?

In all of the early exuberance over Vice-President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz taking over the ticket, it is easy to lose sight of what all of this effort is for. We are carrying this campaign into November 2024 to have our chance to reshape government in January 2025. The politics of this moment is not about slogans or memes or fundraising numbers, but two distinct and divergent visions for the country as we mark the first quarter of the 21st century.

In one version of January, there are photo ops and mementos as some of the most influential women in politics gather for a special, historic occasion. There are the expected faces—Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Hon. Carolyn Maloney—and new exciting additions, like state representatives Zooey Zephyr from Montana and Danica Roem from Virginia, alongside Senator Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, whose vote to change the filibuster would make the day possible. Barely three weeks earlier she would be sworn in by the woman she now stands behind, as President Harris completes her signature with no fewer than a dozen pens on the legislation that recognizes the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution along with another bill that places abortion and gender-affirming care beyond government purview under the right to privacy.

And then there is the January that Republicans have planned.

It would be an autocratic regime, consolidating power in the presidency, treating Congress as an advisory board at best, and quickly arranging every lever in the federal administration to work on their top priority: Government-mandated family structure. No more no-fault divorce, no more abortion pills or D&C instruments for healthcare professionals, no more crossing state lines to get abortion or emergency pregnancy care—because no state will be able to provide any. Queer identities will be made illegal as a matter of expression and history, by criminalizing any librarians who stock books by LGBTQ+ authors and by suing any telecom or social media platform that allows LGBTQ+ media to be shared. Neither adults nor children will be allowed to transition, as gender-affirmation (e.g., breast reduction, hair replacement, puberty blockers) will be confined to cisgender people exclusively. And all of this will be overseen and directed by a man who has been accused of sexual assault dozens of times and adjudicated as a rapist.

The choice between the two would seem obvious in a country that has backed abortion rights by clear majorities everywhere it has been up for a vote—even in the most conservative states. Americans clearly believe that pregnancy should be managed by the person experiencing it and the medical professional overseeing their treatment, and that there’s not much space left for the state or federal government in the exam room. Motivated voters and activists have contributed enough signatures to affirm abortion rights via the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York, and South Dakota, with some complicating factors in Arkansas and Nebraska. In some of those states, voters can add federal representation or key electoral votes to back up their support for bodily autonomy. But only one of the options presented has actually made a case.

While they have tried to ignore speaking about it directly in their platform or at their convention, Republicans have spent years building the architecture for the repressive proto-Gilead they want to create. Behind the legal farce of (corrupt) Justice Sam Alito’s twisted reasoning in the Dobbs decision or the sneering contempt for child-free citizens from GOP vice-presidential candidate JD Vance, there is an ideology of cruelty, hatred, and hierarchy that demands the rights of everyone else be sacrificed to maintain the ideal conditions for white cishet men. Through their lens, women are wombs, not people; zygotes are people, not pregnancies; childbirth is an easy guarantee, and “gender equity” is a term that shouldn’t exist. In every policy, in every GOP-run chamber, in every verdict penned by a conservative extremist, there is the undisguised chauvinism that says it is a white man’s world—the rest of us are just lucky to live (or die) in it.

While a less ardent defender of gender equality sat atop the ticket, the conservative argument for unfettered chauvinism operated in a vacuum. But with Vice-President Harris as the presumptive nominee, there is the unprecedented opportunity to make an aggressive and unyielding case for equal rights, starting with an amendment to the Constitution. Not only are abortion rights and bodily autonomy popular in swing states and partisan bastions alike, but there has never been a better opponent to run against on a platform of gender equality. After all, Donald Trump is the reason that the ERA is even alive. 

After the Access Hollywood tape, “nasty woman,” and his creepy stalking of the first woman to be a major party nominee at the debates, several states took another look at what they could do to affirm women’s rights against the depraved misogyny that had taken over the Oval Office. To that point, the Equal Rights Amendment had languished in political limbo for nearly four decades, ratified by 35 of the 38 states necessary and undermined by a well-funded reactionary movement that had stalled an easy ratification process until the Congress-imposed seven- (and then ten-)year time limit passed by. Yet the open sexism of Donald Trump was enough to convince the legislatures of three states—Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia—that the time for equal rights had arrived. Despite the time limit, despite the attempted retraction of ratification from five states, despite the outdated fear mongering over LGBTQ+ rights and gender parity, the Equal Rights Amendment has proven itself timeless simply by showing that toxic, exploitative, sexist men will always use power to further their own autonomy at the expense of everyone else’s.

Subsequent events—including the appointment of a man with a credible accusation of sexual assault to the Supreme Court and his concurrence in the 6-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that stripped the right to privacy from everyone who can give birth—demonstrated how important it is to have gender equality written into the Constitution. Laws that restrict the medical care that anyone with a uterus can receive, where we can go, with whom we can interact, and how we manage our health and fertility could immediately be wiped out. Laws that limit or outright prohibit access to gender affirmation based on sex assigned at birth would be considered sex discrimination—not only through the amendment itself, but the 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, where John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch joined the majority in the verdict that discrimination against LGBTQ+ employees is due to sex. Reviving the 1873 Comstock Act to prohibit transmission of abortion-related materials would run into strict scrutiny if any administration tried to enforce it. And legislation expanding abortion rights and bodily autonomy to the whole country again would find more protection with a constitutional amendment as a backstop, since conservatives are already trying to forward their own radical interpretation of the 14th Amendment through the skewed judiciary.

But even more than the practical protections of the Equal Rights Amendment are the political benefits of offering transformative change. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for the Trump-Vance ticket to avoid substantive discussion about women’s rights and gender equity with the ERA making headlines from the second woman to be a major party nominee. Vulnerable senators can tie themselves to abortion rights without a jarring or ham-fisted attempt to talk about an issue in which they are not well versed. Where bodily autonomy is on the ballot, turnout can be turned up and tied to Democratic legislators directly, instead of hoping that voters can understand that the only way to protect those rights is to support Democrats everywhere on the ticket. And if that is not enough, simply the opportunity to amend the Constitution and restore power to the people, sovereign in our own right, could be enough to motivate voters to show up.

For years, we have had politicians tell us what is impossible, what is limited, what we can’t have and what they can’t do. We have been told that there’s nothing to be done about the Supreme Court, that we can’t get popular legislation through the filibuster, that even historic turnout isn’t sufficient to protect our democracy. Electing a Congress that could simply do what we ask, and affirm equal rights, regardless of sex or gender, would be a revolution in its own right—even within the boundaries of the current system. It would be a reminder that as broken as it seems, the Constitution can still work for us.

So I continue to imagine January 2025. I think about the Congress we will elect and the legislation we will pass, the order they will restore and the president we will choose to faithfully execute the laws. And when I imagine the historic moment our votes can create, I don’t see the culmination of a campaign; I see the beginning of a new era.