Midterms and 'Mid-Cycle Spotting': Getting Real About Women's Health

[niyad]

Midterms and ‘Mid-Cycle Spotting’: Getting Real About Women’s Health
12/7/2022 by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf and Melissa Murray
Women are having frank conversations about their health, from menstruation to menopause. Is the U.S. ready to listen?



Attendees of the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2022. Thousands gathered across the country to rally for reproductive rights, one month before the midterm elections. (Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images)

With Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection in Georgia, any lingering conservative hopes for a red wave have been dashed. The 2022 midterms have made clear that abortion rights loom large for voters despite pundits’ misplaced predictions of a singularly inflation-obsessed electorate. In the end, the inflation-fueled red wave, the Internet joked, was more akin to “mid-cycle spotting.” It isn’t surprising that period humor was the go-to response. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade last summer, the national discourse has been more frank than ever about the bloodiest of bodily functions. To start, we’ve had to correct politicians’ plain ignorance about menstrual cycles, including comments made by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who initially misstated that S.B.8’s six-week ban on abortion “provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.” (It does not. As commentators reminded the governor, a person is at least four weeks pregnant upon a first missed period, meaning they have two weeks at best to obtain an abortion.)

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, more and more women have felt compelled to go public with myriad aspects of their own reproductive lives. Miscarriage, for example, while a common occurrence, has long been something endured privately (for better or for worse). But now there’s new urgency to shine light on the experience, and especially to flag the prevalence of abortion as a standard medical intervention for it, as well as for ectopic and unviable pregnancies. Celebrity Chrissy Teigen recently reflected on her 2020 pregnancy loss at 20 weeks: “Let’s just call it what it was: It was an abortion. An abortion to save my life for a baby that had absolutely no chance.”Even menopause—among the most taboo of women’s health topics—has been subject to public airing. Former First Lady Michelle Obama shared with People magazine her frustration with the lack of systemic support for a normal, inevitable health transition—one that can span the better part of a decade and comes with its own array of debilitating symptoms and challenges.
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Although lawmakers have emphasized the need for legislation like the federal Women’s Health Protection Act that would codify abortion rights, our policy goals must be more expansive. Our policymaking must simultaneously prioritize other critical aspects of reproductive health. This means supporting legislation like the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, the Menopause Research Act and the Menstrual Equity For All Act, all of which focus on important—and underserved—aspects of reproductive health. The sum of all of these parts surely would create a stronger whole for women’s lives and well-being.

As advocates, scholars and providers now work to reimagine and rebuild what meaningful reproductive care looks like in this country, we have an opportunity to be more holistic in addressing the full continuum of women’s reproductive lives. Private sector interventions and public policy solutions must reflect those intersections. Period. Full stop.

https://msmagazine.com/2022/12/07/midterms-red-wave-womens-health-periods-menstruation-menopause-miscarriage-abortion/