In leaving their female colleagues off a working group assembled to craft healthcare legislation, Senate Republicans made an easily avoidable error.
Both practically and optically, the all-male roster of senators puts the GOP’s forthcoming negotiations over a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare at an immediate disadvantage.
One Republican aide defended the group in a statement to CNN, explaining, “We have no interest in playing the games of identity politics, that’s not what this is about.”
The aide is right – putting a single woman on a powerful group tasked with crafting healthcare legislation isn’t a matter of identity politics, it’s a matter of judgment. Unlike other policy sectors that do not impact men and women in dramatically different ways, healthcare does. That is inarguable. Our most basic differences make a massive impact on the medical services we seek.
Including just one representative from half of the population is not “playing the games of identity politics,” it’s being smart. None of this is to say the male senators on the committee do not have the best interests of American women at heart. I believe they do and have no doubt they will listen to their female colleagues outside of the working group. But from motherhood to sexual health to cervical cancer, there is a host of key medical issues men do not understand as well as women, and the group primarily responsible for drafting reform legislation should include their voice.
If the panel were comprised only of women, the exact same criticism would apply.
Optically, Senate Republicans just gifted their opponents with an attack on the process that will undermine reform efforts in a way that is both effective and lasting.
First, the decision confirms a major stereotype about Republicans that the party constantly works to obliterate, allowing the mainstream media to exploit that narrative with a barrage of unfavorable coverage. Second, if Republicans refuse to add a woman to the group, their reform process will be vulnerable to incessant attacks from the Left that the legislation was drafted without women at every turn.
Those attacks will resonate with female voters who know men do not fully understand their health care experiences.
Adding one of the Senate’s five capable Republican women to this group – to share their insights gleaned from a lifetime spent as women and a career spent hearing from female constituents – is a common sense decision. In fact, it’s a decision so obvious, I’m baffled Senate leadership neglected to make it in the first place.
Conservatives are often the first to acknowledge the biological differences between men and women. We should also be the first to acknowledge those differences impact healthcare in salient ways.
Don’t add a woman to the working group for the sake of identity politics. Add a woman to the group because it’s drafting legislation that will impact women.
A request for comment to the communications office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was not returned by the time of publication.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
