Biden’s Executive Order: Advancing Women’s Health and Reproductive Rights

The president also announced more than 20 new actions and commitments by federal agencies to advance women’s health research, including $200 million for the National Institutes of Health.

TFD – Discover President Biden’s significant steps towards advancing women’s health and protecting reproductive rights through federal initiatives and funding.

On Monday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at advancing women’s health care research and fortifying data standards.

In addition, the president announced over 20 new initiatives and pledges from government agencies, including $200 million for National Institutes of Health research. In his State of the Union speech last month, Biden urged Congress to fund a “Fund on Women’s Health,” which the White House described as a preliminary step toward that goal.

Last month, First Lady Jill Biden announced funding of $100 million for women’s health.

Despite being “underrepresented across the board,” the president claimed that women are not underrepresented in his administration during remarks made on Monday afternoon at a Women’s History Month event at the White House.

“We’re proud to have an administration that looks like America, with more women serving in a senior position than any time in American history,” Biden said. He complimented women holding high positions in the Defense Department, including the first woman to be confirmed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Vice President Kamala Harris. He also lauded Ketanji Brown Jackson, his choice for the Supreme Court.

In addition to stating that his executive order directs “the most comprehensive set of executive actions ever taken to improve” women’s health, Biden emphasized that research on women’s health care “has taken much too long.”

He criticized Republicans who opposed the American Rescue Plan, the Covid-era economic stimulus bill that he signed into law, saying its increase in the child tax credit “cut child poverty nearly in half.” He cautioned that his rivals are undervaluing the “power of women” at the voting booth.

“Clearly those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade to support a national ban on abortion have no clue about the power of women,” he said, referring to conservatives who support the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the landmark ruling.

He continued, addressing female voters, “They’re going to speak out again in 2024 and send me a Democratic Congress that supports reproductive freedom.” “We will reinstate Roe v. Wade as the supreme law of the land, I swear to you.”

There has never been “such a comprehensive effort from the federal government to spur innovation, women’s health, and ensure that relevant federally funded research works harder for women,” according to Carolyn Mazure, chairperson of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, during a media call on Sunday afternoon.

“This will help improve the health and lives of women across the nation and is a huge opportunity for transformative change,” stated Mazure.

Despite the fact that women make up half of the population, she pointed out that there hasn’t been enough funding or research done on women’s health.

Heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease, and conditions specific to women like endometriosis and fibroids are just a few of the conditions that we still don’t fully understand how to prevent, diagnose, and treat in women. “While we’ve made tremendous progress over the last two decades, from revolutionary discoveries in certain disorders affecting women to increasing the number of women enrolled in clinical trials,” Mazure said.

In November, the White House initiative on women’s health research was introduced by the president and the first lady. According to Mazure, Jill Biden has led the initiative by touring research facilities across the nation and talking with women and entrepreneurs in the healthcare industry about the need to change the landscape of women’s health research.

The president called on Congress to provide $12 billion in new funding for women’s health research during his State of the Union address. Part of that funding included the creation of a central fund for women’s health at the NIH, which would, among other things, enable the establishment of a national network devoted to the study of women’s health, according to Jen Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council.

According to Klein, Biden is giving federal agencies instructions “to integrate women’s health across the federal research portfolio,” giving funding for research and innovation priority through organizations like the Small Business Innovation Research program and the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. The initiative intends to “assess unmet needs to support women’s health research by identifying gaps in federal funding and requiring agencies to report on their progress in improving women’s health,” she said. It also aims to stimulate research on women’s midlife health, including post-menopause diseases and conditions like heart attacks, Alzheimer’s disease, and osteoporosis.

The executive order was issued in response to strong opposition to a recent verdict on in vitro fertilization procedures by the Alabama Supreme Court, which stated that embryos are regarded as children. This decision caused state Republicans to move quickly to draft legislation safeguarding the technique.

Democrats have made reproductive rights a central theme of their 2024 campaigns, and Biden has consistently denounced the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the historic Roe v. Wade decision.