Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

What We Can Learn From the Current Menopause Moment

At a time when the Trump administration is endangering women’s health, more than half the states, red and blue alike, have introduced menopause legislation.

All this momentum opens the door to reshape the national conversation about equity in women’s health.

The Trump administration has exacerbated an already dismal status quo for women’s health. In the United States today, women die from avoidable causes more than in any developed country. Our maternal mortality rates are among the highest worldwide, exponentially worse for Black women. All the while, the National Institutes for Health (NIH) continues to slash grants that address disparities by race, sex, or gender, outright barring words like “women” and “diversity” from funding proposals.

Yet, in statehouses across the country, lawmakers seem to be delivering on at least one area crucial to women’s well-being: menopause care. How is it that this issue of all the issues has broken through as a matter of public policy? As a writer, lawyer, and advocate whose work centers on the politics of periods, from first to final, I’ve seen firsthand how menopause can defy partisanship and win political support. The momentum menopause advocates have built offers important lessons for all of us at a time when it can feel like all hope is lost.

A decade ago, I helped to develop a legal and policy blueprint for dismantling the “tampon tax” in the then-40 states charging sales tax on menstrual products. More than half (22 states) have since passed laws axing the tax, as municipal, state, and federal jurisdictions, including the first Trump administration, moved to mandate free pads and tampons in public facilities like schools, jails, and prisons. The mechanics of menstruation seem to evoke an oddly potent combination of empathy and engagement among lawmakers—I once teamed up with a male Republican lawmaker to write publicly about it—opening the door to uncommon bipartisan agreement. We all bleed red.

Unlike the above menstrual policies, which were all but nonexistent in this country prior to 2015, there is a well-documented history of active neglect of midlife women’s health on Capitol Hill, no matter the party in charge. While women have long been disregarded in medical research, it was the 2002 press conference about the Women’s Health Initiative, the first-ever and to this day largest NIH-funded study of postmenopausal women, which caused a cascade of misinformation and harm that lingers still today.

It took another two decades for a “menopause moment—marked by viral headlines and celebrity spokespeople—to coalesce. This moment has morphed into a burgeoning movement, driving the demand for modern, evidence-based care, treatment, and medical education, and leading to a rare opportunity in 2024 to win a trifecta of congressional........

© The Nation