In this episode, we are joined by Ting Ting Cheng and discuss the importance of the ERA, how it impacts uterinekind, and what we can do to help push for the ERA.
Ting Ting Cheng, Director of The ERA Project at Columbia University Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, joins us for a sobering conversation about the history of the obstruction of the ERA, the hope for enshrining the ERA in the Constitution, and the work being done at the state level to protect the rights due all humans.
Without constitutionally protected rights, the majority of people in the United States are subject to gender inequality. That is not a democracy. This issue is so important and directly impacts accessibility to reproductive and gynecologic health care, especially for POC and those living in communities with little to no access to care. Please get loud about the need for the ERA and support the work of The ERA Project.
We close on a high note about a weakness in cancer and the woman who is leading the charge to exploit it.
Thanks for listening, learning, and being you. And join us back here every Tuesday for all things uterus, in service to you, uterinekind.
Carol:
First. We are human created equal, deserving of the right to live and love freely. I'm Carol Johnson, and this is Hello Uterus.
Today's episode of Hello, Uterus is an episode that I have been looking forward to forever because I've been searching for an expert on the era to come and talk to us. And we found one. We found a really, really important person who is going to be making an impact for years to come, I predict. And it's not like I discovered her, by the way, works at Columbia Law School. I'm sounding like the fastest person out in the out the wilds. Not the case. So we will be talking with Ting Ting Cheng in a little bit. But first, Uterus in the news,
check your dry shampoo. We talk about endocrine disrupting chemicals a lot here on Hello, Uterus. We talk about a lot of the things that people don't want to talk about, but we have to be talking about them. So yeah, a recall. Really sorry to be the one to deliver this blow, but dry shampoo the coolest thing ever. Unless it's dry shampoo that contains elevated levels of benzene, which is a carcinogen. All of the effective items that have been recalled by unilever, which is 19 different dry shampoo products, are aerosol sprays. So if you have the aerosol spray dry shampoo products, please dispose of them in a planet friendly fashion, which does not mean they're on the mountain garbage. According to the company's statement, an internal investigation identified the propellant as the source of the benzene. So this propellant that's in the aerosol can, that enables it to spray whoever creates that propellant for them, their supplier is addressing this issue and those products have been pulled off the shelf. But how long were they on the shelf? How many millions of people are using dry shampoo that has benzene in it? We just talked last week about the problem with using hair straightening chemicals and the fact that they are absorbed through the scalp and they do travel through the body and they have been located in the uterus. And now we've got another one, benzene. So if you've got any aerosol dry shampoos in your closet, in your bathroom, under your sink, wherever you keep that stuff, I want you to go and get it and I want you to get rid of it. Because exposures to high doses of benzene can raise the risk of certain cancers, including leukemia, as well as anemia and other serious blood disorders. And you know what? We got enough going on. We don't need to be challenging the human body anymore, especially not the human body that has a female reproductive system in it. So please do get rid of those dry shampoos. You can get powder dry shampoo, but you gotta make sure that's clean too. Which is why what we always say here is go to beauty heroes. When in doubt, go to beauty heroes and by the way, they don't pay us for saying that. We don't pay them for saying that. It's a legitimate you really need to if you use a certain kind of product every day on your skin, please go to Beauty Heroes and check out the they have an Ingredient list there that can tell you all the things that you should be avoiding. And then also check out their products. A lot of them are so affordable, last forever, and they're amazing. So I'm done with my impromptu beauty heroes commercial. We are going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, I'm going to introduce you to Ting Ting Cheng, who is the director of the Era Project, which is part of the Columbia Law Schools Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. You do not want to miss this conversation, so thank you for tuning in. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.
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Carol: Today's guest is here to have a very important conversation about the Equal Rights Amendment. Ting Ting Cheng is the director of the Era Project, part of the Columbia Law School Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. It's a law and policy think tank established in January 2021 to develop academically rigorous research, policy papers, expert guidance, and strategic leadership on the Equal Rights Amendment. Ting Ting is a civil rights attorney and activist. Before joining the Era Project, she litigated gender discrimination cases at legal momentum. The Women's Legal Defense and Education Fund. Earlier, she was an attorney at the New York City Commission for Human Rights and a public defender and immigrant defense attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services. Ting Ting was the Legal Director of the 2017 Women's March on Washington and served on the National Organizing Committee and is also an award winning Fulbright Scholar to South Africa. You show up every day, Ting Ting. It's clear. Welcome to hello, Uterus. We are so glad to have you here.
Ting Ting: Thank you. So nice to be here.
Carol: So, can we start by clearing up. What I find is still a misconception, and that is that the Era is ratified and enshrined in the Constitution. There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about the Era.
Ting Ting: No one has it quite right. So I'll clarify some things for people. It's really a debate, Carol. I think that there's a credible argument for the fact that it's been fully ratified. You know, it's passed the very high bar set forth in the Constitution in Article Five, which is that a proposed amendment to our Constitution has to be passed by a two thirds of both houses of Congress and then sent to the states for ratification by three quarters of 50 states. So that's currently 38 states. So that's an extremely high bar. I fear that if we try to amend the Constitution today to say the US. Is a democracy, it probably won't pass these constitutional bars. Right. So the Era has achieved has achieved those requirements, and under Article Five itself, as you know, we have an originalist Supreme Court. They would only read Article Five and sort of say, well, those conditions haven't satisfied. So there's a strong argument for why it should be considered the 20th Amendment and enforceable in this moment. However, there are some kind of lingering legal issues to the question of its legitimacy or the ratification process. And that has to go do with a compromise that was made in the Senate. In order for it to be pushed out for a vote, they decided to add a seven year time limit, which was extended, which ultimately expired ineighty two. And the Era at that point was three states short of the 38 states needed to fully ratify the amendment. Unfortunately, within a year of the states approving, I mean, within a year of Congress voting to approve the Era in 1972, 30 states have voted to ratify. So in the very beginning, and it was a huge bipartisan effort, people felt, especially people in the women's movement felt, that it was going to be a selffulfilling prophecy, kind of, we're on our way. But there was a huge backlash to the Era, and it really halted it within the recent years, the last three states did ratify the Era in Illinois and Nevada, and then finally in Virginia in 2020. But the question remains what to do with that time limit that did expire before these last three ratifications. What do you do with it? I think the argument for that is that Congress makes laws and Congress repeals laws when Congress's actions can't bind future the actions of future Congress. And so this current Congress can certainly pass the resolution to lift the deadline and to get rid of it, basically, and they've been acting to do so. The House has passed two resolutions to do that, and it's before the Senate.
Carol: Hmm It's before the Senate. Dun Dun Dun...
Ting Ting: Yes, exactly. Well, you know, and of course, there's a filibuster in the Senate which really there's a majority support for lifting the time limit. In the senate, there are at least 51 senators, both obviously democrats and republicans, on record of supporting that resolution to lift the time limit. But obviously, because of our filibuster rules, we have to get to 60, right? So that I mean, in a way, when you think about the extreme high bars the constitution sets for an amendment, there are two extremely high bars in congress and also at the state level, but then you have the filibuster, which presents a third extremely high supermajority bar to the era. The question is, is that fair? I don't think other constitutional amendments have been subject to these sort of extra rules.
Carol: And when you have an amendment like this that simply is designed to state that all humans are equal and deserving of equal treatment under the law, why is this so hard? There's probably multiple answers to it, but is the obstruction of the era, in your opinion, coordinated? Is it, for instance, the time limit? Did they assume that would work? They being people who aren't rushing to enshrine the E-R-A in the constitution, did they assume that that time limit would work to their advantage? Is this some sort of obstruction situation?
Ting Ting: Definitely. At the time, I think the idea was to impose any kind of limitations to the ratification process to prevent it from actually happening. And if we look at the history of our amendments to our constitution, the time limits are we're not really a practice until the prohibition amendments. And so it's not even part of the practice. And scholars have studied the history of ratifications to our constitution, and none of them, including the bill of rights, have been at all smooth, kind of legally consistent, without issue, because article five is so broadly worded. So it's kind of hard to sort of say, well, when is it or isn't it? In the constitution? Every single amendment has had that process where the legal requirements have been met. But then there are kind of larger sort of societal, cultural concerns about, like, do we all accept that this isn't a constitution? This happens with the reconstruction amendments. And that's a second kind of legal barrier that's sort of at play right now, which is the question of decisions. Certain states who've previously voted to ratify the era have since purportedly voted to rescind their ratifications, but that's not historically acceptable. The supreme court has never said that's acceptable. And there are many strong arguments for the fact that if you allow that to happen, that would just topple the democracy, and let's do something extraordinarily important to amend the constitution and then just change their minds. That's not how democracy works. There are strong arguments against acknowledging recisions of a ratification, and certainly certain states during the I mean, it was the reconstruction era, so that was a different time that certain states did try to rescind their ratifications of the 14th amendment and that was ignored. Yeah. Go back to your very important question of sort of like, why is this somehow a controversial issue? You're right. It's a fundamental principle that exists in all other democratic constitutions. To me, I think it's a little bit of a national embarrassment that we haven't really fixed this omission in our constitution. We do have the oldest constitution in the world and the hardest one to amend, and we have a supreme court that's trying to put us all back in that time. We have a court that's tasked with protecting our rights and interpreting our constitution, but whose viewpoint is that we should all get into a time machine and go back to the 18th century. Right. And at the time, it's ridiculous. I have to say that when the US. Advises other emerging democracies, their advice is to include explicit gender equality in those constitutions.
Carol: Oh, man, it's just going to get darker. It's just mindboggling.
Ting Ting: And I understand, and I get it. It's controversial because it's a wedge issue that's been always used by politicians to gain power, right, to create so descend to create polarization within people. And obviously the right to bodily autonomy and abortion has been a huge issue, and it's been a tool for people to gain political power. And with dogs, it's very much now become kind of a huge player in this question about, like, are women and sexual minorities full and equal participants in this democracy? Jobs is a problematic telling of our history where women actually don't have equal rights and just basically need to give birth. But the era is countering that. And so, yes, it's a fundamental principle that absolutely belongs in our democracy, in our constitution, like every other democracy, but it's also a shield and a tool to protect against these very dark forces that are using women and sexual minorities to gain political power, to uphold the patriarchy.
Carol: That's where my nausea comes from. Because when I listen to you lay it out in such a clear fashion. And I sort of get this feeling that it's like you're overlooking the whole scene and you can see the different levers that people are using and the way that they're using the era as a tool or preventing its wide adoption in an effort to control women and LGBTQ plus. And what blows my mind about all of this is that it's not more of a hot topic that people nationwide aren't speaking out about the stonewalling of it. I mean, we've had decades. It's almost like people are saying, like, you got to keep fighting. You got to keep fighting. And I agree, we have to keep fighting. But I mean, really, just to be considered an equal human being on earth, we have to still keep fighting for that in 2022. And so what it makes me feel like is, wow, it was never their intention. It's all gaslighting, and they're distracting people from other issues. By focusing us on abortion when in general, it seems like they just want only white males in workplaces and in positions of power and leading our various industries and systems in 2022. That really is heartbreaking.
Ting Ting: I understand how it can be threatening because it really does challenge just the prevailing notion of how our ordered society is run and what role women and maybe mothers play in this and that's ambient. I think that a lot of these things are still accepted by people and challenging these rules is actually very threatening. You know what. I was talking to some equal pay advocates and they were saying this is a wonderful year because the way that we've sort of looked at equal pay day. How we've been doing these different breakdowns of black women's equal pay day and Latino. Native American and Asian. And it falls on different days because it takes that much longer for them to earn the same amount as a white male counterpart. And that finally, these numbers are also going to involve considering part time workers and also, I think, workers in the gig economy. And that's all well and good because that's going to create a more accurate portrayal of the numbers. However, I think that if you are parents, it's another fulltime job that's unpaid and that doesn't exist in a wage labor market. And so how do you account for that, especially in a post or pandemic world when there's even less secure child care for people and education structures that are a little unreliable? So that's just accepted that people who are parents have another full time job that's completely uncompensated and with no benefits attached due with that omission, we don't seem to care or that we don't even see it as a problem even though we know that it's a problem.
Carol: Yeah, and that brings it makes me think of the data that we do have, you and women posts, one study showing economic gains with gender equality and economic losses when there's genderbased inequality, I mean, it's like the data is there. So why fight what works if it's all about money, which to some it's all about money. It's clear that including all in the workforce, in productive society, giving everyone equal opportunity and equal pay ultimately benefits the economy. So why are they fighting that which works?
Ting Ting:I feel like you're asking me the ultimate questions here.
Carol: It's a Monday, Halloween. Like, I don't even think the sun has risen here yet.
But yeah, do you know why? Because I for the last I get probably the hardcore the last year and a half, this is almost all I can think about. It's more than the repeal of Roe, which was horrible. It's the overall sort of weight, I feel that is, as you describe, like dark forces. And it's uncomfortable.
Ting Ting: not to make assumptions about you, but I think that when I have privilege, I have access to resources and I've had a world class education, and I have a wonderful sort of crew around me. I have a wonderful partner, and we have a nanny and wonderful schools for our kids. It's easy to just kind of think that things are okay. It's easy to apply your reality to every single other person's reality. And that's been the problem, I think, with the abortion rights movement, is that when roe was decided in 1973, it was a problem for women of color to begin with. When we talk about the lack of access for women for abortion in different states that have severely restricted it, it's been even worse for women of color. And so it's easy to assume that our conditions apply to everybody. One thing I'll say, which is maybe the kind of silver lining, the very patina silver lining, is that I think everybody is very much everybody's kind of opened up to this current reality. And it's not just about our own lived experiences. It's about the kind of pain and suffering that all women in this country are going to face, especially the most marginalized. I mean, just this idea of people in states with no access to abortion, right? It's basically compelled pregnancy for whom it would result in death. I mean, it's an incredibly medically complicated condition to take on. Right. Also, it pushes people it drives people deeper into poverty. So, I don't know. There's something unifying about this moment. It's horrendous. It's such a dark moment, but it's all of a sudden we're able to look up and see everybody else around us and understand that until everybody has equal rights, no one is fully free. I think that concept is really, like, kind of surfaced. What do you think?
Carol: Yeah, I agree. It probably started about six years ago in earnest. I wonder what happened then where I think we all felt threatened, and as a result, maybe what I saw was that group of people, citizens, feeling threatened and coming together. We've seen glimmers of that in other situations. We're seeing it actually unfold to a degree in Iran, which I want to ask you a question about that in a second. But before we go there, this is a question that has been I've tried to ask this question on social media, and I have gotten no response. So here's another one of those big questions, and I'm afraid to ask it. How would the era have supported efforts to block the repeal of roe if it was published to the constitution?
Ting Ting: Well, so let's tackle the question legally, right? Roe founded the right to abortion in the constitution based on the liberty clause of the 14th amendment to process clause. So that's based on privacy rights. At that time, abortion advocates, including Ruth Bayer ginsburg, didn't think that that was kind of the right tactic to go. She felt like it should have been grounded on equality. So there's a textual basis in the constitution. So it's a little stronger. But also this idea there are two fundamentally different concepts. One has to do with the right that needs to be protected. It's a very important decision that's private between a woman and her doctor, very, like, behind closed doors in the doctor's office. There's something paternalistic about that. That strikes me like it's still kind of like a woman who needs consultation from a doctor who's probably a man, that kind of thing. Right. But equality, grounding, reproductive autonomy, inequality is different. It has to do with the fact that the choices that you have in how whether if you want to have family. A family. How you want to face it. How you want to do that. Along with all of these other choices that you have to participate in your livelihood and your education and everything else in your community. That's a matter of equality because that's how you participate in the democracy. And if you don't have the fundamental choice of a bodily autonomy, you can't fully function as a full citizen in society. Right. So that's a different basis, and that wasn't Roe, right. The Era would just add more text into the Constitution that explicitly protects gender equality. And so the argument is that the right to abortion would absolutely be protected by something like an era. It would take advocates to make that argument, and unfortunately, it would take a specific composition of the Supreme Court to really get behind that. And if we had an Era today, if a case went up today to the Supreme Court challenging and challenging jobs, what do you think they would do? Do you think that they would all of a sudden change their minds? I don't know. I think that they seem to be a court that's outcomes based, and we know this. I mean, they would think Donald Trump ran on this platform of, I'm going to put people on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. So I don't think the Supreme Court, at least the majority, the conservative majority today, is kind of in fact, there's an Era case that could potentially get appealed to them. They're waiting to kind of, like, put an end to the Era. But at the same time. I do think that adding I think that changing the Constitution will outlive the Supreme Court and it will be so durable. As we say. It's very hard to amend. And maybe we've done it already. So and I think that in a future time. When we have a more progressive court that's embracing of civil rights and social progress of all. Not just kind of elevating the rights of maybe maleness whiteness Christianity. Whatever the very far right is doing right now in their tactics. I think that there's a moment where you can root that right. Inequality and the Era would create a really strong basis for the right to abortion in the Constitution once again, and a lot of other things.
Carol: Yeah. One of the thoughts is that what don't we or what not? You probably are thinking about this, but sometimes I think to myself because it seems so nefarious and like, I imagine that there's all this snickering going on behind closed doors. Like they didn't catch us. We pulled it off. We got them looking at other things and we were able to prevent the Era from being enshrined. And look at us now. We've overturned Row. That's kind of where my head goes. It's sad because it does feel like an attack. And as you mentioned before, I want to point this out. I am privileged and I have access to Gynecologic care. And if I don't like my Gynecologist because my Gynecologist, let's say, is telling me that I need to get my husband's permission before I get an IUD or something, I can go to another Gynecologist. But there are over 50, over 50% of the counties in the United States of America lack with Gynecologists. And so not only do people of color and people who are in communities that have less resources. Not only do they never have equal access to uterine health care and to reproductive healthcare. But even if the Era is enshrined. And even if we do codify Row. We still have lack of access issues. Which to me is kind of like lack of care issues. Lack of caring issues that are going on. It's super frustrating. Speaking of uterine health and female centric conditions like endometriosis and fibroids and things like that, have you uncovered any information or have you had conversations with people around the potential impact to clinical research funding? I'm concerned that people will just kind of pull back with the repeal of Row and with so many gray areas and various regulations that aren't understood that they will peel back funding and will have less interest in studies and development of new minimally invasive technologies. Have you come across any conversations or research around that?
Ting Ting: I haven't. It's not a particular focus of the research that we do at the Era project, although I think it's incredibly important. I think in general, just the funding for studies to do with women's bodies has been very much underfunded. Right. And so I can see how that could be one of the results of kind of the legal landscape right now. We think a lot about how the law is going to cause just a lot of suffering and perhaps more deaths having to do with reproductive health care. And again, I don't take lightly the fact that I have really good access to health care and also really good reproductive health care. However, for a lot of women, especially black women in America, the act of giving birth can mean death. Maternal mortality rates are so high within certain communities and that ranks us so low in terms of, like, compared to our peer nations. That's absurd given how many resources we have in this country. And it makes me think about the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court court case that was argued, the case where we submitted an amicus brief to it's. A group of abortion providers sued the government to say that their ban on Medicaid coverage for abortion in the state violates their state eras. Pennsylvania has a state era that was added in the 70s, which is wonderful. But like most other state eras, there are about 26 right now that are indisputably in the state constitution, so we can enforce them right now. They've all been quite underutilized, especially this one in Pennsylvania because of a case that was handed down that basically said that Medicaid can't be used to fund abortion, fund women who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to have an abortion. So clearly discriminatory on its face, the text of this law just says it applies to women who are pregnant, but yet at the same time there are no comparable medical services for men that are not covered by Medicaid. Right. Men can get all sorts of comparable services covered. Women for some reason just can't get abortions who can't afford it. That's on its face is discriminatory based on sex. Absolutely. And then also just the way that the law was intended. You know, I think it amounts to the argument as it amounts to a form of sex stereotyping because it reflects the stereotype that women should be mothers and belong in the home to raise families and not in the public sphere, in government, in the workforce. This is happening at the state level. There's an era in Utah, one of the oldest in the country, and that era has been used to basically put a stop to their abortion ban twice. Right. So people can get abortions right now in the state because of the state era. So that's incredibly exciting. We might have to put the federal era on ice because we don't want to push the issue to the Supreme Court. We don't want sort of people who are very hostile to women's rights to declare dead over and over again, once and for all at the apex court in this country. But we do have state eras, and I think now more so than ever people, executives who are willing to enforce the eras in a broader and more creative way and maybe in ways that were never done before. So that's exciting.
Carol: That is exciting. Although it makes me nervous because the states that don't have state eras are often the ones where there's a large segment of the population that is left without support and services. And again, then it brings this full circle back to the question that, you know, or the conversation that we could have for hours and we probably cry at certain points during it, which is, gosh, really, we have to argue over this first. We are human.
Ting Ting: I know it's ridiculous because I work with the smartest scholars, right, like feminist, sort of like legal scholars, Katherine Frankie, Michelle Goodwin, Julie Suk, Melissa Murray, all of these people, the most brilliant legal minds, and what are we doing? We're just sort of saying, like, half the population deserves equal rights under the law that we still lack. It's not we are coming up with, like, the smartest legal arguments. You know, we're doing all sorts of, like, legal jujitsu and writing books. But what exactly are we arguing for? Really? Nothing that complicated, I don't think.
Carol: No, exactly. And what's so frustrating about it is I would love for all of you to have other jobs, to take those brilliant minds of yours and to put them to work on other things that need to get done rather than, here we are again, 2022, still doing this. It brings me to a question that I wanted to ask you about Iran. Looking to Iran and the revolt that is happening right now, led by girls and women and supported by their loved ones, which speaks to something you said earlier. Other people are waking up to the recognition that we all deserve equal human rights. And when I think about Iran, I think the revolution happened in 1979. Prior to that, if you wanted to wear a miniskirt and lipstick and go to work, good on you. And if you wanted to not do that, that's fine too. Right? And then look at how swift the decline in rights has been. Is it dramatic or is it misinformation or is it spot on to think that something like that could happen here?
Ting Ting: Do you think that something like that is happening here?
Carol: I do. We can make left and right turns at any time. But right now, the path that we're heading down, when I look at other countries who have gone through similar things afghanistan in the women had equal access to education. It was a high fashion hotspot. I mean, it's happened around the world and people have been studying it.
Ting Ting: Sorry to interrupt you.
Carol: Please do.
Ting Ting: People have been studying it. There's Erica Chennawith in sewing marks who are professors and scholars at Harvard, and they've been studying this idea of the rise of the I guess the rise of autocracy again, you know, this kind of global movement toward the right. And lately I've been really into reading the writing of Anne Applebaum. Do you know her? She writes about, like, democracy failing. She wrote a book called Twilight of Democracy and studying different case studies in Europe and Eastern Europe where you have an open society like in Poland, and then all of a sudden things just devolve. And it does make me want to draw this kind of direct line to what we're experiencing. And I'm not being dramatic, but I think that when I look around me and I look at the kind of the polarization around me, I see that we are in a system that's a little bit openly fascist. I mean, insofar as our lawmakers, the people that we elect, they are no longer driven by this desire to think about creating laws and policies to further social progress, to help people to represent their constituents. All they're doing is creating more and more polarization as a mechanism to consolidate power. Right. That's their goal. And so that's not a functioning democracy that we have right now. And that scares me. And it does remind me of other countries, as you say, descending into chaos. And also this attack on facts, this attack on education. Not that we've ever really had any kind of clear and comprehensive mandate for sex education, let's say, like that's actually based. But even now, I mean, there's an attack on sex education. So Dobbs has ended the right to abortion, constitutional right to abortion in America. And at the same time, we have an attack on sex education where young girls and women still don't know what the menstrual cycle is or how that even works. And also critical race theory. When I read Dougs, it's terrible and it's cherry picking awful cases to justify this rationale. But when I read it, I think it's kind of like a repudiation of our history. It's saying that we're just going to completely ignore all the work, all the progress, all the fights that we've been having, and just to declare the state of the world this way or to declare that we are going to get rid of this. So it's disturbing.
Carol: Yeah, it feels like, as you were describing that, it sort of feels like as if the country was in a mental crisis where the people well, maybe it's not the country, it's just the people in power. But I'm just trying to think of like a metaphor where they're making statements or sort of like looking toward an endgame and literally ignoring reality, like just ignoring the fact that there are people here. None of that matters.
Ting Ting: None of it matters. Yeah. On record. Right on camera. On record. And there's no shame. There's no reflection. There's no sense of right and wrong,
Carol: which is what makes me feel like it's like a disease
Ting Ting: and consequences. Yes, it kind of is. There's a scholar who I love. He's also at Columbia. His name is Jamal Green and he wrote this book called How Rights Went Wrong. And it's fascinating because it's all about how we in this country put we put a lot of faith in our legal system to adjudicate kind of rights. And we also have a legal system that's very much about a little bit more black and white than other countries. So we've moved away from this idea of protecting pluralism, that there can be many different rights that can all coexist. And we need to figure out and where there's conflict, we need to figure out a way of peaceful coexistence that's respectful of everybody. Whereas here it's almost like a ranking. It's kind of like the Supreme Court. You see they've been creating kind of these treating kind of religious liberties right now as first tier rights, right? So people using religious liberties as a way to not have to follow civil rights or that are elevated above other people's individual rights. The example is the kind of the Christian baker who refuses to bake a cake for a gay marriage or whatever, but that's very much happening. So we are kind of on a collision course between religious liberties and individual rights in a really problematic way. He talks about this. We put so much of our faith into courts, and the courts are just so black and white about rights, and they're now very much willing to kind of, like, rank everybody. I see that problem with the Era, to be honest. I mean, there's this litigation in the Era, and it was just argued in the DC. Circuit Court, and the questions have to do with these questions about ratification. So questions to do with well, not even it has to do with whether the archivist who's an administrator has to basically certify the last three ratifications and basically publish the Era. But underlying all of it are the questions to do with the legitimacy of the ratification process and also what it means. I think that there it's too much to put on the courts. I think it's inappropriate for the courts to interpret what the Era means. It's a constitutional amendment. It's up to the democracy. It's really up to people and lawmakers, elected officials, people who really reflect the democracy, to give it meaning over time. It's not up to the Supreme Court to say this is or isn't a matter of our democracy, or this is how we should interpret it.
Carol: That is an amazing point, that it's not just a small group of people who run something right, not elected, and also varying degrees of knowledge and awareness of the issues that tumble out of or even really, I guess, varying degrees of care as well. And the Court is not the one that is on the streets out there implementing the Era and having it grow and having, as you indicated, having the community respond to it and then looking for ways over time to expand the support that the Era offers. Like you said, it just a few minutes ago that it used to be that our elected representatives were working for us, and now we're getting into a whole new show, it seems now that they're working for others and not us, and those others are probably corporate America and various other entities, maybe some of which we don't even know. They might not even be within the borders of this country, but at the same time, to end with a little bit of a silver lining, at the same time, we are still alive and on the planet, and we deserve to be treated equally. There's no argument that can be made that can definitively say that one human being should have more rights than another human being. That's never going to happen. So to that end, you said that we might have to put the federal era on ice, and that made me kind of hiccup a little bit because it shouldn't matter where we live, right. What can we do to help support your efforts and just things that we can do on our own as citizens to not allow this conversation to be small?
Ting Ting: Yeah, I guess I could start with kind of like a big overarching, more like philosophical answer, and then I can get down to the specifics. But when I think about sorry to mention him, but when I think about Trump and I think about this kind of motto of make America great again, right. It's just a total denial of our history. I think that we need to just acknowledge that we have a broken system. We have a history that there needs to be some deep soul searching about where we come from, what system that we've inherited that upholds and perpetuates inequality and how we need to fix it. So first there's that kind of acknowledgment, and from there, we can really see the era as a really important and viable tool in fixing the system. But there has to be this acknowledgement first, not this kind of feeling of American exceptionalism. Make it great again. It was never great to begin with. It's okay for us to say that, right? Yeah, let's just call it for what it is we need that the Era can really inaugurate a societywide effort to repair systemic inequality beyond sex, I think, and to dismantle structures of discrimination far beyond what our existing laws can do. And I don't want to say permanent because the Constitution can be offended, although it's very, very hard, but it's a durable kind of addition to the Constitution that would add protections for people, women and sexual minorities at a time when the Supreme Court is taking away first time they've ever done this, taken away an individual right, that could benefit people. So this would do this, and this kind of social progress would be protected long term. It wouldn't be reversed by politicians, by judges, by the forces of our kind of like political polarization in terms of what people can do. I think it just has to do with, like you say, why isn't everyone talking about this? Like, why aren't we out on the streets just demanding right, demanding justice for all, demanding this in the Constitution? So I think it starts on a community level. Like, there's a civic engagement that I think has to be uplifted, and it's up to everybody to have these conversations in your communities. And then it's a long multigenerational movement. And to me, what's really exciting is the next generation is the young people that are going to take up the baton and really think about the era as a modern movement that they've defined for themselves. And so there's so much to do. And this is another wonderful strategy to oppose the far right wing tactic of getting rid of facts and using the educational system and attacking curriculum and things like that. It's sort of like build up curriculum, work with schools, work with institutions, work with libraries and building up curriculum that both talks about the need for equality but also acknowledges all of these women constitution makers that have worked for the last 100 years to get us this far and obviously support abortion funds and vote and things like that. But there's a kind of like a very deeply entrenched need for civic engagement that I think has to happen.
Carol: Agree. 100% agree. And when you mentioned the generations that are coming, I just felt like sunshine because I know my own kids, 17 and 15 and honestly, like, I don't know, this probably isn't going to come out right, but you're not telling them what to do. Like they just have such a different take on the world and it's kind of like maybe to some degree without them actually literally thinking this, that they're thinking, soon you'll all die off and then we'll get down to work because you guys are annoying. That might be a conversation that happens among teenagers these days.
Ting Ting: Yeah, I know. It's funny because as an immigrant. You know. There's an analogous where I've read it's very kind of poetic to me. This idea of like as an immigrant. One of the things that you can do to kind of prove that all of your parents'hard work and sacrifice has been worth it to leave their families and move so far and to struggle and to work so hard is to get to a place where you've completely kind of outgrown them. Right. It's to surpass them in this way where it's almost like they can't even relate to you. That's sort of how I think about the youth, too. I know that they're going to look at me and the women's movement, I think, has been historically very much one based on compromise and incrementalism. And so we look to the past and we sort of judge them for their blind spots. And it's okay if the next generation looks at the work that we do and judge us for our blind spots because that shows progress and it shows imagination and you know, and true, they're getting closer and closer to it.
Carol: So absolutely. Yeah, we can release control. We don't have to control everything. I wish I had some super secret powers that were like that, where I could just eliminate control and then just watch everybody go kind of slow down and be kind to each other
Ting Ting: and go and forge go build this perfect new world.
Carol: Go build it. Exactly. There's so much that we could be focused on. And I want to thank you. I want to be respectful of your time and I want to thank you for doing the work that you're doing. Where can we follow your work?
Ting Ting: We are the Era project at Columbia Law School. So it's kind of a long website, but I think if you Google Era Project Columbia Law School, we will be the first search term that comes up, and I will send you the link. If there's something that you can share out with the podcast absolutely. For your audience. You can find us on Twitter and also on Facebook and sign up for our newsletter. I mean, we issue these briefs. We issue legal analysis, different work that we do often. So you can follow our work that way, too.
Carol: We're going to promote that because that's what we need out of this conversation and the other conversations that people are having. We need to spotlight what's going on with the Era and spotlight what's happening at the state level, showing people how state Eras help protect their rights and then hopefully making it happen at a federal level too. Ting Ting, thank you so much. We are so appreciative of the work that you're doing. I'm so grateful that your parents had you, that you came here, because seriously, I just felt like, oh, my gosh, is anybody working on this? Because it's really scary out here. And then we were like, hey, they're working on it. And it was such a thrill to discover the Era Project and the work that you're doing and to have you on the show. So thank you.
Ting Ting: Thank you. We're in this together. We're all working forward toward a better future. So thank you, Carol, for everything that you do. Let me plug one more thing, which is that we do a lot of public programming that we make available on YouTube. So when people can search for the center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School and they can find a lot of our programs on YouTube,
Carol: Excellent. Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. And then also Google the Era Project in Columbia Law School, and we'll include the links in our show notes and in our social channels. And Ting Ting Chang. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time today.
Ting Ting: Thank you.
Carol: We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Ending on a High Note.
Carol:
There is a major breakthrough in cancer research. This is really exciting. Like, I love these kind of high notes. This is a high note with no low note in it. So an experimental drug has, for the first time, been shown to block a gene that is central to the growth of many cancers. This is a breakthrough. The treatment known as Omo 103. It's a thrilling name. It works by suppressing MYC. What's MYC? MYC is a protein coding gene. That's the technical description of it. The nontechnical description of it is that MYC tells cells to multiply, and the nontechnical description of cancer is cells multiplying out of control. So in a study of a dozen patients not a lot, not a giant population, but you got to start somewhere. So in a study of a dozen patients with various forms of hardtotreat cancer, the drug was able to halt tumor growth in eight patients. Halt? Halt tumor growth. Wait till you hear the kind of cancer that this truck can address. So they're calling Omo 103 a mini protein, and it was developed to be able to enter cells and reach the nucleus. And in experiments in the lab and in mice, they showed that Omo 103 successfully inhibited the ability of MYC to promote tumor growth. The lead study author, dr. Elena Geraldo is the director of the early drug development unit at Val de Bronn Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain. Goodness. So anyway, Spain is like just one of the coolest countries ever. So she says, and I quote, NYC is one of the most wanted targets in cancer because it plays a key role in driving and maintaining many common human cancers, such as breast, prostate, lung, and ovarian cancer. So this MYC M, as in Mary PS. Not NYC. If it's switched off, then that's my language. I don't know if that's what it technically does, but if it's switched off, then the cells don't continue to multiply and it halts the growth of the tumor. So keep your eye on this. These are the kinds of things that I wish the whole as I said, or maybe alluded to in the interview with Ting Ting. I wish people like Ting Ting could focus on other things other than trying to prove to other humans that this subsection of humans over here are equal. It just seems like such a ginormous waste of time, except that it's absolutely essential for the health, wellbeing, and livelihoods of so many. I get its importance. It's just sad that in 2022 we have to be doing this, because what we could be doing is focusing on a billion other things that carry us forward in really productive and positive ways for the planet. And this is an example of one. So if you're ever looking for a pick me up, go check in on what Dr. Elena Goralda, I think I'm saying that right. It's G-A-R-R-A-L-D-A. What she is doing at the Early Drug Development Unit? And it's VH I o is the acronym in Barcelona. So Dr. Elena will put this in our show notes, and we'll post this on our social, so you can check it out. But stay in touch with these things, with these really awesome advancements that are happening in healthcare that are going to help heal people. Yeah, just focus on that. That's what I want you to focus on. We're recording this on Halloween. So if Halloween is a thing for you, then I hope you get lots of candy or that you have tons of fun and that all the little goblins out there. Have a great, safe time today. Thank you, Angel and Mariel, for producing this podcast. And thank you, team, at Uterine Kind for cranking on our app, which is coming soon. So exciting. And we are also going to be having some incredible guests coming up in the next few weeks, so make sure that you follow us on Instagram at uterine Kind and that you subscribe to the podcast. Hello Uterus, wherever you get your podcast and please leave us a review. If you find this information helpful and supportive, then tell your friends and leave us a review so that people can find this podcast. It helps get the word out about the show. Thank you for being here, thank you for listening and we hope you have a great week. We'll see you next week. Till then, be well, be cool, be kind.
Angel:
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