Whenever there is a lull in perceived slights to complain about, or a lag in legislation to trumpet their inequities, radical feminists trot out the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).  They are baffled, they say, as to why this amendment to the U.S. Constitution has not been ratified.

Presidential advisor Tina Tchen recently wrote a blog “Supporting the Equal Rights Amendment” on the White House website.  She pretends ignorance as to the reasons why the ERA went down in spectacular flames — lit by activists like Beverly LaHaye and Phyllis Schlafly, fanned by state legislatures who felt the heat from conservative women, and blow-torched by the Supreme Court.

Tina writes that, “Its premise is quite simple: men and women shall have equal rights under the law. It is hard to imagine an argument against this basic concept.”

The last time the ERA was trotted out, Concerned Women for America dusted off our arguments and added updated evidence in the article, “Equal Rights Amendment Strips Women of Their Rights.”

Tina claims that women are “underpaid and underrepresented in our country” and credits Barack Obama with “advancing the role of women and girls in every aspect of society.”

Tina ironically overlooks, however, one significant population of women who advanced because of President Obama: Conservative women who ran for — and won — office to oppose his disastrous policies.  The election of 2010, the first after he took office, has been called the Year of the Conservative Woman.  Pro-life women moved from their homes to the House of Representatives, Senate, and governors’ mansions.

And they didn’t need the Equal Rights Amendment to do it.

News media are abuzz after a Donor Sibling Registry (DSR) — a nonprofit set up to help sperm donor children find their biological fathers and siblings — has revealed that some sperm donors have fathered dozens, sometimes hundreds, of children.  Many donors contributed sperm weekly for years at campus clinics for $50 per donation, a fast and easy source of spending money for college guys.  And those men, now middle-aged and many married with children, are discovering that they have several — and in some notable cases — numerous children.

One news article featured Todd Whitehurst, a 45-year-old medical engineer, who gave little thought to the consequences of donating sperm as a college student, but years later has now found nine children “sired by his sperm.”  Whitehurst said he was shocked to learn that the first girl, discovered when she was 14, bore a remarkable resemblance to him.

A biogeneticist ran the numbers and calculates the possibility that Whitehurst could be the father of 42 to 60 children.  The DSR found that one man in Virginia “has sired an astounding 129 kids,” and a man in the Boston area “has been traced to 72 kids.”

The reports focus on just one DSR, but that single entity has found 92 groups of 10 or more offspring, and 336 groups that have up to nine siblings.  The DSR founder, Wendy Kramer, has a sperm-donor child who wanted to find his dad.  Kramer noted that nearly a quarter of donor dads contributed to more than one sperm bank.

The public is now discovering that the donor industry has an almost total lack of regulations.  While the industry “ideal” is to destroy a donor’s sperm after that sperm has produced about 10 live births, many clinics like using sperm that are guaranteed successful.  As they put it, “high performers who rack up many pregnancies are among the most popular donors selected by women.”  A further problem is that the birth numbers are reported by the pregnant women, which is an unreliable, incomplete, and inconsistent method of record-keeping.

Thus another in a long line of our quick-and-easy, man-made solutions ultimately becomes a nightmare as the consequences involve dozens of teenagers discovering half-siblings living near and far and fathers discovering children that they never knew existed, who now want to claim their “dad.”

As the GOP primary race heats up, the latest bump in the road for some of the candidates is the Susan B. Anthony (SBA) List’s pro-life pledge. Mitt Romney and Herman Cain have both refused to sign it.

So why not? One of Romney’s key objections, based on his National Review article, seems to be his belief that the pledge would limit his ability to choose cabinet members and officials for his administration should he win the presidency.  SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser clarified to me – and the wording of the pledge is unmistakable – that the pledge applies only to “relevant Cabinet and Executive Branch positions,” such as department heads and cabinet officials only in agencies with direct impact on abortion policy.  Do we really want a president to appoint another Health and Human Services Secretary like Kathleen Sebelius, who was discredited from the start as an ardent abortion supporter with close ties to the late George Tiller, a notorious late-term abortionist? No, we certainly don’t. 

I understand pledges may not mean much when it comes right down to it, but Mitt Romney especially stood to gain a lot with a show of support for basic pro-life principles. Many social conservatives view his candidacy with skepticism because he was against pro-life freedom before he was for it.  Not to sign the pledge is a strategic error on his part if he means to solidify his support among pro-life Americans, a number that is growing.

Another sticking point is RomneyCare.  Mitt Romney says the state Supreme Court forced him to cover abortions and pay for it with taxpayer money.  But, a principled pro-life governor would not have surrendered to pragmatism.  He would have found a way around the problem.  This is exactly what tripped up the not-pro-life-after-all former Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) when he caved on ObamaCare on exactly the same pro-life issue.  He chose universal coverage over the lives of the unborn.

In short, conservatives find it hard to trust Romney’s pro-life protestations.  Any candidate who claims to be pro-life should be willing to commit publicly to appointing pro-life officials to the relevant federal positions.  By the same token, fiscal conservatives would never trust a candidate who was willing to appoint a tax-and-spend Treasury Secretary.  Defense hawks would never trust a candidate who they suspected might appoint a Code Pink Defense Secretary.  Bottom line:  Romney lost a great opportunity.  I wish him well, but he should have thought this one through.  In fact, every candidate in both parties should.

Lauren Dillingham and Wendy Wright

After speaking to Generation Joshua home school students, telling stories of rescuing babies from abortion, I explained why Christians need to be engaged in public policy by showing what happens when we’re not.

During the Q&A session, a young woman asked, “Have you ever met one of those babies that you rescued?” I said that I hope to one day and noted that they’d be about her age now!

I was shocked by her response. “I was rescued from abortion and adopted because of you,” she said. Her birth mother wrote her letters mentioning me. What a beautiful gift, to see the fruit of a seed that was sown years ago!

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero

Before Obama, there was Zapatero.

In 2004, Spanish voters elected Jose Zapatero as Prime Minister of Spain.  The candidate for the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party wasted no time in instituting same-sex “marriage,” overturning the conservative country’s pro-life laws, and making “Education for Citizenship”— a curriculum based on the concept that there is no right or wrong — a required course for school children.

In May 2011 — in a rout similar to our 2010 elections — voters in Spain threw out the long-serving Socialists in regional elections.  After decades of socialists’ ruling, Spain faces a new day.

Unrelated to the elections, but in a fateful twist of timing, I was in Madrid just days later. Pro-family government officials had invited me to speak on the pro-life movement in the U.S.

Though we have far to go in the U.S. to protect life and family, we do have valuable experiences from which other countries can benefit.  The members of Spain’s Congress, civil society, and media who filled the room in the Capitol building that day were surprised to learn how our failures became stepping stones for later success and that it can take years to see results if we are persistent.  They also learned how it takes a variety of people, inside and outside of government, working together to show the reality of abortion’s impact on babies, women, and society to change public opinion and laws.

Many in the audience had not heard that women who regret their abortions are now speaking out.  Most likely, it’s because post-abortive women in Spain are not yet ready to do so.  A university professor said that her students, the women in particular, need to hear this.  So I gave her a copy of “After the Choice,” CWA’s powerful DVD in which women explain why they had their abortion, what happened during their abortion, and the effect on them since.  The grateful professor said she will show it in her classes.

Congressman Angel Pintado, who sponsored the event, is president of Parlamentarios y Governantes Por La Vida y La Familia, an international organization for pro-life and pro-family parliamentarians.  European pro-lifers face different challenges than American pro-lifers do:  their byzantine government systems and lack of civic spirit manifests itself in heavy reliance by citizens on government services.  But the Congressman’s enthusiasm matches the opportunities now available, and he’s eager to go beyond the “way it’s always been done” in order to build a culture of life.

Reflecting on our experience in America, he wrote, “Once again I would like to express my gratitude while I congratulate you for the clarity of your ideas, your rigorous work and for the successes you have achieved in the U.S.”

America can still be a shining city on a hill, providing hope for those working to make their own countries better.  Congressman Pintado and his allies could use our prayers.

Because the General Services Administration (GSA) keeps track of the government equipment, we know that the Obama Administration almost doubled the number of limousines in the federal fleet over the number during the Bush Administration’s final year (412 in 2010 compared to 238 in 2008). According to various news sources, most of the increase occurred immediately after President Obama took office and his first year, during 2009.  For instance, Vice President Joe Biden gave up his daily train commute to enjoy door to door limo service to and from the West Wing of the White House.

I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised that political appointees — who used to be considered public servants — want celebrity treatment complete with limo and driver, but during a time of fiscal crisis it seems inappropriate for the federal budget to include payment for a 73 percent increase in limos to transport White House Czars and other administration or foreign dignitaries around town. In fact, the majority of the limos belong to the State Department for their bigwigs and special diplomatic guests. Each extravagant limo comes with a price tag of over $60,000 for a total of more than $10 million — and that doesn’t count the extra items like sirens, armor, and the ability to conduct undercover surveillance. There are even specially equipped limousines for countries “where they drive on the other side of the road.”  Not surprisingly, all these behemoths together use “a huge 963,000 gallons of fuel a day” [emphasis mine].

Yet, just before news about the increase in the number of limousines became known, the President had the gall to send out an executive order for agencies to increase the fuel efficiency of the federal fleets. This is yet another example of the prevalent “do as I say, not as I do” attitude of the current administration. 

Like many other justifications for excessive government spending, the administration claims that the limos are needed because of “increased threat to diplomats” and as protection against “high threat environments.” If that is the case, they need to explain why the number of limos for the Department of Homeland Security has decreased.

As complaints about this latest extravagance rolled in, the GSA spokesperson furiously backpedaled by saying that “their figures might not be accurate.”  After all, she added, the term “limousine” is not clearly defined!