President of the United States Joe Biden has pledged to invest $200 million USD ($304 million AUD) into research on women’s health.
Biden signed an executive order on Monday, announcing the investment to a room full of women, including American actress Halle Berry and journalist Maria Shriver.
In addition, the President’s executive order requests $12 billion USD ($18 billion AUD) from Congress for further funding for women’s health research, including ways to utilise artificial intelligence (AI).
“Think of all the breakthroughs we’ve made in medicine across the board, but women have not been the focus,” President Biden said on Monday.
“Research has taken much too long to get to y’all. And I’m gonna make sure that women’s health is integrated and prioritised across the entire federal government.”
President Biden also ordered his administration to report on progress made in erasing gender gaps in health research.
“Across the board, this is really serious,” he said.
The Irish poet Eavan Boland wrote –
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 18, 2024
“I’ve learned my name. I rise. I rose up. I remembered it. Now, I could tell my story. It was different from the stories told about me.”
American women have risen up to tell their story.
Today, we celebrated them at the White House. pic.twitter.com/T65hPWT92P
Jill Biden also addressed reporters at the announcement on Monday, noting the exclusion of women in medical research over centuries.
“Even though women are half the population, women’s health research has been underfunded and understudied,” Jill Biden said.
“Too many of our medications, treatments and medical school textbooks are based on men and their bodies. But that ends today.”
According to research in a medical journal from last year, women experience twice as many adverse reactions to more than 86 types of medication approved by the US’ Federal Drug Administration.
Researchers note most medications are approved by the FDA through clinical trials, which more often than not are conducted solely on men, or only include women in the first or second stages of the trial.
Women-specific health issues also go largely underfunded and under researched in the United States. For example, while endometriosis affects at least 11 per cent of women in the US, just 0.038% of the 2022 health budget was allocated to endometriosis research. This equates to about $2 USD allocated per patient.
Abortion rights in the US
In 2022, the US Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, which resulted in significant reduction of abortion rights around the country.
Since the decision, 14 states have explicitly criminalised abortion. As of this year, just four states enshrine abortion rights in its constitution: California, Michigan, Ohio, and Vermont.
Vice President Kamala Harris has been vocal on her position on women’s reproductive rights, especially with the upcoming presidential election against Republican candidates who are generally pro-life.
“At this moment in states across our nation, we are witnessing a full on attack against hard won freedoms and rights, including the right of women to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Vice President Harris said at Biden’s announcement for women’s health funding.
The 2024 presidential election is coming up this November, and it’s looking like it will be a sequel of the Trump v Biden 2020 election.
During his presidency, former president Donald Trump made consequential policy decisions that significantly restricted reproductive rights. For example, on his campaign trial, he declared he would only appoint a Supreme Court justice who would overturn the Roe v Wade decision, appointing Justice Neil Gorsuch to the court in 2017. According to reports, Justice Gorsuch would take just ten minutes reviewing the 98-page Dobbs opinion, before approving it to remove federal abortion rights in the US.
According to 2022 data from the Pew Research Centre, 62 per cent of US adults said abortion should be legal in most cases, while 36 per cent said it should be illegal.