Contributor: California can be a leader by taking menopause policy seriously

Among the many many audiences Gov. Gavin Newsom has provoked recently, one cohort is especially fired up: menopausal ladies. I do know I felt a rush of adrenaline (or maybe it was a scorching flash?) once I noticed actor Halle Berry take to Instagram this week to demand the governor make menopause a public coverage precedence.

From Hollywood to Capitol Hill, menopause continues to be having a moment. However no entity has succeeded greater than state lawmakers in remodeling all of the buzzy headlines into significant motion.

Earlier this summer season, CNN and NPR declared a “nationwide motion” for menopause legislative exercise, reporting a document 15 states introducing upward of two dozen bills as of July. So speedy and sturdy was this agenda, the digital information outlet Axios dubbed menopause coverage “the brand new tampon tax” — one other seemingly out-of-the-blue however wildly widespread reform that swept via statehouses lately. (California is one in all 22 states that has repealed gross sales tax on menstrual merchandise during the last decade.)

The momentum was not so surprising to me, although. I’ve written over many years on menstruation and menopause. I’ve engaged firsthand with lawmakers of all political stripes dedicated to those points — for instance, those that handed legal guidelines to ease the burden of the price of interval merchandise. After the 2024 elections, I suspected there could possibly be new political will to tackle menopause and embrace insurance policies that would assist ameliorate the challenges of discovering enough care and therapy for all its disruptive signs.

This conviction led me to workforce up with main medical specialists to publish a Citizen’s Guide to Menopause Advocacy again in January, with a foreword by the journalist and former California first woman Maria Shriver. We set forth lots of the reforms that states at the moment are embracing — issues like higher schooling for medical doctors and higher info supplied by public well being departments, improved entry to and insurance coverage protection of menopause remedies, and extra sturdy office protections and lodging.

At present, seven states have menopause legal guidelines on the books; California is one in all them, having codified help for restricted continuing medical education opportunities for providers. The tally will certainly develop as a number of extra states tee up new proposals for 2026 — like in Michigan, the place a bipartisan pair of lawmakers not too long ago filed a number of payments and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer kicked off a listening tour in communities across the state.

Right here and now, all eyes ought to be on California’s newest legislative transfer. A 2025 invoice championed by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, AB 432, now poised for passage, addresses two key wants — affordability of care (requiring medical health insurance plans to cowl menopause remedies) and high quality of care (incentivizing clinicians to include menopause-specific coaching as a part of their skilled licensing persevering with schooling requirement).

AB 432 is a modified model of prior laws that handed final yr however was vetoed by Newsom, who argued on the time its provisions had been “too far-reaching.” The present legislative language is attentive to his considerations, for instance limiting protection to FDA-approved menopause remedies. However there’s no assure of a gubernatorial inexperienced gentle, given statewide infighting over a broader array of medical health insurance practices and insurance policies.

There’s something a lot deeper than a single legislation at stake in California. The state is able to be a frontrunner on menopause points — not a lot within the particular provisions, however within the tradition.

California wouldn’t be the primary state to go the provisions which can be in AB 432. As for insurance coverage protection, Louisiana holds that banner; its legislature grew to become the primary within the nation to require Medicaid and personal medical health insurance plans to cowl perimenopause and menopause remedies. Amongst different states on the fore, Illinois now has a devoted Menopause Awareness Week, Maine handed funding for state health department educational resources, and Rhode Island is the primary to ascertain workplace accommodation protections.

However Newsom’s personal model as a contemporary democracy avenger — California’s function in driving the nationwide redistricting disaster response, the state’s self-proclaimed standing as a protected haven for abortion rights — makes for a ripe alternative to show and articulate that menopause belongs squarely within the pro-democracy discourse too.

Menopausal ladies are a contingent 75 million sturdy within the U.S. and entitled to accessible, competent healthcare and therapy. Our accrued knowledge and expertise contribute profoundly to the economic system, to tradition, to the physique politic. We’ve each proper to demand lawmakers and political leaders spend money on our well-being, our dignity, our humanity. And we all know that after we battle for ourselves, we additionally battle for our daughters — and for the long run.

Halle Berry’s marketing campaign is cleverly known as “Flip Up the Warmth.” Who higher than a military of menopausal ladies to take action? Our democracy can be stronger for it.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is the chief director of the Birnbaum Ladies’s Management Heart at New York College College of Legislation.