The Presidential Elections & Women's Health

By Cindy Pearson, Executive Director

When Americans vote, we do more than select our favored candidate. The act of voting presents a real opportunity to express our views about the direction the country should move in the future. In just a few months, we’ll go to the polls once again and choose our next President (and other officeholders, as well). Here at the NWHN, we believe that health care is vital to women’s lives and futures, and that the candidate’s positions on health care should inform voters’ choices. Of course, prime among health–related issues is health care reform — this is one of the major issues in which the Network is interested, and on which we’re focusing our efforts.

There are an enormous number of issues that are essential to improving the health of all women, and that will be affected by the Presidential election… will the government fully fund programs that support healthy pregnancies, family planning, and HIV/STI prevention? Will Federally funded researchers be allowed to look at subjects too controversial for the current Administration, like sexuality? Will judges’ positions on abortion be scrutinized before they are considered for nomination?

In this issue of the Women’s Health Activist (WHA), we’re very lucky to have an in-depth article from our colleagues at the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) that analyzes the two Presidential candidates’ positions on health care reform. The NWLC’s Lisa Codispoti and Julia Kaye use a gender lens to examine the approaches taken by Senator Obama (D-IL) and Senator McCain (R-AZ) to reform the U.S. health care environment. For example, the authors describe how the candidates’ proposals that rely on employer-sponsored insurance may leave a large number of women without coverage, since many employers fail to include part-time workers in their health care plans and women are more likely than men to work part-time.

NWHN’s own health care reform campaign, Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need, is mobilizing women in various parts of the country to attend town hall meetings and candidate forums and to raise key issues that must be addressed in any viable health care reform plan, including: affordability, reducing disparities, and prohibiting insurers from using pre-existing conditions to refuse coverage. (For more on Raising Women’s Voices, see the July/August issue of the WHA or visit the website at: www.raisingwomensvoices.net.

NWHN takes an expansive view of what’s necessary to create good health for all women. We believe that information, services, and objective research are essential, of course — but so are broader social policies that impact conditions necessary for good health. Adequate housing, safe environments, and healthy food are just some of the conditions that we all need in order to be, and stay, healthy.

We are also concerned about issues that we see as being health-related, but which go well beyond the individual and one’s immediate environment, and touch upon the broader question of how we, as a country, spend our tax dollars. For example, a few years ago, NWHN partnered with Women’s Actions for New Directions (WAND) to create a special newsletter issue on militarism and women’s health (see the July/August 2005 issue of the WHA). WAND’s research challenges all us of to consider just how much of our country’s resources are directed to the military, and what are we losing as a result. This, too, is an important consideration for all of us, as we head to the polls.

NWHN is a non-partisan organization. We care about policy, not political parties. We’re doing everything we can to make sure that women’s health policies are advanced and improved — not hampered and hurt — as a result of the upcoming election. In that spirit, we encourage each and every one of you to do what you can, too. Get informed about the issues that matter to you, get engaged with the process and, most importantly, vote on November 4th!