At the Intersection of Women’s Health and MAHA

When he’s not drinking raw milk, mauling bears, or rejecting the measles vaccine, RFK Jr. is busy telling women how to manage their bodies.

Trump’s inaugural National Conference on Women’s Health in Washington was held from March 11-13th, aimed at advancing research, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of health conditions affecting women. The event was spearheaded by representatives from the MAHA movement, covering topics including menopause, hormone therapy, fertility, and Lyme disease, among others. 

The Make America Healthy Movement, a coalition led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claims that they can reverse chronic disease rates in the U.S. by targeting ultra-processed foods. However, they’re more known for their multitude of controversies, a prime example being RFK Jr.'s polemic claiming that gestational Tylenol usage correlates with autism.

The media attention coming out of the conference focused primarily on numerous controversies, including MAHA representatives’ Christo-Evangelistic resistance to birth control and pseudoscientific treatments for endometriosis. This intentionally overshadows the health problems afflicting women in this country. While the conference was marketed as scrutinizing gaps in women’s health, recent policy changes withdrawing funding regarding women’s health research highlight a stark contradiction.

The event featured over 55 speakers hailing from the American Medical Women’s Association, American Heart Association, and many other organizations. One keynote speaker was MAHA-affiliated fertility doctor Marguerite Duane. Dr. Duane was recently featured in a New York Times article regarding the MAHA-backed rise in natural family planning; she was tapped as the Trump administration’s pick for a representative of fertility awareness programs. Dr. Duane's inflammatory remarks garnered much media attention, setting the tone for the conference. 

Her fertility advice? Asking young girls about their maternal aspirations. “I have these conversations with children starting at 8, 10, 12 years old: “” What do you want to be when you grow up?” Duane said. If you’re a child who wants to be a doctor, for instance, “there are things you need to put in place. If you hope to have children one day, there are things that you need to consider and have the conversation early.”

Doctor and young girl, available under creative commons license 4.0 at Hillside Horizon

A rising effort to demonize birth control was also a hallmark of the conference. Oral-based hormonal birth control is a cornerstone of reproductive autonomy, treating gynecological conditions such as PCOS, ovarian cysts, and endometriosis. Dr. Salcedo, a California-based OB-GYN, recommends against birth control. She prescribes cod liver oil and Vitamin A as remedies to endometriosis-linked pain, despite limited scientific evidence.

Her reasons for opting out of hormonal birth control include the Christian conservative values against contraceptives, which deny women reproductive autonomy.

This rhetoric limits the treatments available for women’s pain. The MAHA movement peddles nostrums and pseudo-science about how birth control affects future fertility, and condemns pain medications like Tylenol. This leaves women with few options to manage their reproductive health. 

While all this fearmongering and fodder invigorated the press, the real conversations about gaps in women’s health were completely overshadowed. A CNN article titled, “Birth control skepticism, teen fertility education center stage at Trump’s women’s health summit,” fails to remark on more pressing conversations at the conference, including revolutions in menopause treatment using hormone therapy. This article is the only piece from CNN regarding the conference. 

Just like that, controversies distract while the general public is left in the dark about the real progress being made. The conversations coming out of the summit are a microcosm of how the MAHA coalition gradually destroys Americans' trust in medicine while espousing trust in the government. As we rush to fact-check whether there really are long-term fertility side effects to birth control, or what age we should be having fertility conversations, we lose sight of the larger issues. 

Issues like the defunding of abortion care in the Veterans Affairs office, the heightened regulation of mifepristone, the restriction of access to cancer screenings, and STI testing for young women go overlooked. This is the state of the poly-crisis – we’re so distracted by the little fires we can’t see that the whole house is burning. 

Opinion by Maya Antony