Cynthia Pearson Comments

The women’s health movement fought for answers to women’s questions about our health, research on conditions important to us, and safe and effective treatments. As Norsigian (p. 844) describes, the women’s health movement of the past 50 years produced important results. But the impact of these gains was not experienced equally because so many people did not have access to basic health care. The women’s health movement recognized that fighting for universal access was essential to accomplishing the movement’s vision; and for the past decade, expanding access has been a priority for the National Women’s Health Network and many other women’s health and rights organizations.

Our approach to fighting for health reform and defending expanded access to health care has important lessons for the future of the women’s health movement, and health justice more broadly. In 2007, the National Women’s Health Network joined with the Avery Institute for Social Change (now part of the Black Women’s Health Imperative) and the MergerWatch Project of Community Catalyst (now the Women’s Health Program) to create Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need.¹ Raising Women’s Voices built on women’s health movement strategies to mobilize women to fight for health care reform. We knew that women were the grassroots experts on health care and that they would not only speak up for their own needs, such as reproductive health care, but also enthusiastically support efforts to make health care better for everyone. We also knew that access issues crossed race and class divides and built a multirace network that centered the voices of those most often left out.

Women organized town hall meetings, met with legislators, shared their stories, and rallied over and over again. Women’s support for health care reform helped build momentum for proposals to move through the legislative process, shored up skittish administration officials when passage seemed uncertain, put a personal face on the impact of the ACA (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) when court cases threatened access, and kept issues of concern to low-income women, women of color, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, intersex, queer) folks, and immigrants front and center. Now, we continue to defend the ACA against explicit attacks and administrative sabotage, and we challenge the racist underpinnings of efforts to undermine Medicaid by imposing bureaucratic obstacles to eligibility cloaked in the guise of work requirements.

Reducing the number of people who are uninsured, expanding contraceptive coverage, and chipping away at the racial disparities in coverage are all important gains, and we’re proud to be part of these accomplishments. But the National Women’s Health Network and other women’s health movement organizations also continue to demand what we don’t have—universal coverage, routine midwifery care, accessible and affordable contraceptives and abortion care, effective treatments for autoimmune disorders and other important conditions, and clinical research that includes women and people of color in representative numbers, to give just a few examples.

We also address the important question of exactly what we’re getting with our hard-won access. All too often, our health insurance cards give us access to excessive screening, overtreatment, and low-value care. Information about health issues, so easily available now, is often more about selling something than providing unbiased facts. We speak out against disease mongering,² false promises, overtreatment, coercive counseling, and misleading information—for example, the creation of osteopenia, routine hysterectomies for benign conditions, “early detection is the best prevention” ad campaigns, assurances that egg donation is “safe,” and family planning programs that leave women stuck with IUDs (intrauterine devices) they no longer want.

Together with our allies in the health justice, consumer health and safety, and reproductive health, rights, and justice movements, a vibrant women’s health movement will be a part of making change for the next 50 years.