The Fight for Midlife and Menopausal Health is Essential to Reproductive Rights--and Democracy

https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-fight-for-midlife-and-menopausal

https://archive.ph/agWv9



One week into the Trump presidency, attacks on reproductive health and rights have begun. The administration reinstated the “Global Gag Rule,” banning aid to groups abroad that discuss or provide abortion. Twenty-three individuals convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act were pardoned. Among the blitz of Inauguration Day executive orders, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” conspicuously incorporates the vernacular of fetal personhood, a central legal strategy for enforcing a federal abortion ban. Simultaneously, federal health agencies are dealing with an alarming order to halt external communications, stymieing the flow of crucial information to the public and stalling timely review of research grants.

Against this backdrop, it may sound surprising to hold out hope for the immediate future of any women’s health issue. But I think menopause may be an outlier. Perhaps you’ve seen the headlines: menopause is having a moment, from this month’s new tell-all books by Brooke Shields and Naomi Watts to viral clips of Halle Berry shouting from the steps of the U.S. Capitol: “I’m in menopause, OK?!” Commitment goes well beyond celebrity moments and includes notable support from public policy leaders across the spectrum—Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and in blue and red states. These prominent voices are part of a new wave of recognition that menopausal women deserve to make informed choices about our bodies. Just as the fight for reproductive rights is an essential tenet of any free and fair democracy, so too is autonomy and health at this life stage.

Enter A Citizen’s Guide to Menopause Advocacy, a new digital resource featuring a dozen leading health experts. (I am a co-author of the Citizen’s Guide, together with Dr. Mary Claire Haver; Maria Shriver wrote the foreword.) Our goal? To mobilize everyday people failed by the nation’s longstanding lack of investment in and commitment to mid-life and menopausal healthcare. In the words of leading neuroscientist and Citizen’s Guide contributor Dr. Lisa Mosconi: “Menopause remains one of the most under-diagnosed, under-researched, under-treated, and under-funded fields in medicine. We owe women centuries of research.”

Women’s representation in scientific research has been historically woeful. (Up until 1993 there were no laws requiring that women be included in clinical trials.) According to the most recent National Institutes for Health (NIH) annual budget review, less than ten percent is dedicated to women’s health, according to an analysis by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The first year the NIH ever tracked its menopause-related spending was 2023. The total amount? Just over one percent.

snip