It started with 13 men. After a series of closed-door discussions and no public hearings, this all-male Senate cohort drafted the Better Care Reconciliation Act, the legislation intended to accomplish the long-standing Republican goal of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.
It ended, however, with three women—at least legislatively.
For those who might not have kept up with the recent drama of the Senate's health care bill, earlier this week Senators Susan Collins (R–Maine), Shelley Moore Capito (R–W.V.), and Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) effectively killed—at least temporarily—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's efforts to repeal the ACA when they came out against his plan. (Having already lost support for his replacement bill—one that would leave 22 million uninsured within a decade—McConnell wanted to just repeal the bill and figure things out later.)
But beyond Capitol Hill, what was truly instrumental to the blockage of the Senate GOP's health care plan was six months of civil activism—and efforts that were led, in large part, by women.
After millions of women—and men—gathered throughout the U.S. and across the globe for the Women's March just one day after Donald Trump's inauguration, some wondered how they would continue the momentum. But if the sustained and forceful activism in response to the Senate health care bill is any indication, these women aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
Among the thousands of activists are plenty of women who, prior to 2017, had a limited—if any—role in civic engagement. Women like Emma Gregg, a 25-year-old who's been living in Portland, Maine, for the past two years who didn't realize the power of an undecided senator while living in her decidedly blue home state of Illinois.
"I never called my senator when I was living in Chicago," she said. "I read the news now and see Senator Collins as a deciding factor. For me, that has made me way more politically minded and made me feel I have a responsibility: She has this sway I never saw before."
As a result, Gregg has taken a more proactive approach to the bill, organizing rallies in Portland and hosting Women Resist house parties on behalf of the women’s advocacy group UltraViolet—an organization that, according to cofounder Nita Chaudhary, pooled support from its community of 1.3 million women (and men) to host rallies on Capitol Hill, buy anti-BCRA ad space on billboards and in newspapers, and even fly planes with banners urging on-the-fence senators to vote no.
Across the country, groups like MoveOn, MomsRising, Organizing for Action, Our Revolution, and ADAPT sprung to action and mobilized people to do whatever they could to stop the BCRA—whether it was by calling their senators, launching letter-writing campaigns, or even going to their legislators' offices—both state and national—to host sit-ins and speak their minds. According to Daily Action, the alert messaging system that provides daily reminders about civic engagement, over 200,000 calls were made to Congress in protest of the ACA repeal over the past two months—with 127,000 of those calls going to the Senate alone.
"In the wake of Trump's election, millions of shocked Americans committed to be more engaged in our democracy, even people who had never really been political before," Moira Muntz, a Daily Action spokeswoman, told Glamour. "Activists have taken to the streets and the phones in unprecedented numbers boosted by social media—and women have been leading the charge. Phones in Congress are ringing off the hook with constituent calls setting new records as activism has surged."
“I’ve never seen an outpouring of activism like we’ve seen in the past sixth months,” said Anna Galland, the executive director of MoveOn. “We’ve had conference calls to talk about how we were going to defeat the health care bill and the rest of Trump’s agenda. We had one conference call that broke the Guinness World Record for the number of people on a conference call. We had 60,000 people on the line, and fortunately, most of them were on mute—you can imagine what the background noise would’ve been like.” (For those wondering, the previous world record was set in 2012 when 16,972 were on one call.)
For those in D.C., however, this recent deluge of dissent has not been a welcome change. In June about 50 disabled women and men—members of the disability rights group ADAPT—were arrested while protesting Medicaid cuts outside of McConnell's office. Just days later 10 members of ADAPT's Denver chapter were removed by police after staging a two-day sit-in at Republican Senator Cory Gardner's state office. But the looming prospect of legal action has done little to deter activists—if anything, it's only cemented their commitment to the fight.
"The health care battle was a direct matter of life and death to tens of millions of people—and a linchpin fight in the broader struggle over this administration's ability to move its agenda forward," Galland added.
In the outer reaches of the country, women like Shoshanah Stone, a 54-year-old living in Anchorage, realized that their senator could be someone critical to the outcome of the bill—and wanted to make sure her vote represented the people of her state. Stone's urge to take action occurred almost immediately after Trump's election, and she became involved with multiple activist groups to see how she could help—whether that was making calls, hosting health care speak-outs, or coordinating sit-ins and vigils at Murkowski's Anchorage office.
"Our point was to pressure her to kill the bill, Stone said. "Games are being played with people's lives, and I don't think people will give up fighting against this."
Like Stone, Theresa Bohanan, 38, of Reno, Nevada, knew that Trump's election meant she would have to get an early start in the fight to protect health care—not just for herself, but for her one-year-old son who was born with a heart condition. Bohanan spent months trying to arrange a meeting with her Republican senator, Dean Heller, but to no avail.
"If you go through a lot of trauma going through the health care system, this national policy debate reopens a lot of those wounds of what American health care looks like—flaws and all,” Bohanan said. "Then to continue the debate and hear the way people talk—it's almost as if people don’t see the human side of this debate."
Beyond her efforts to reach her own Senator, Bohanan shared her story publicly to draw attention to what was at stake for her, and millions of other families who also faced a health emergency, both at town halls and with advocacy groups like Organizing For Action and Ultraviolet.
But even in blue states, fear that the Republicans in Congress could strip away health care from millions of American has mounted in recent months. In western Massachusetts, Rachel Maiore, 48, was one of many women—spanning across generations—spearheading efforts to call and write members of Congress, lead rallies, and host advocacy days at the State House.
"Being in a blue state, I think people felt a little more insulated, but the attacks on women and health care started merging," she said. "People are definitely on alert."
One of the most obvious examples of the attacks on women and health care merging: The GOP's continued efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.
Outside of general resistance to the health care bill, efforts specifically aimed at protecting Planned Parenthood from losing its federal funding were huge. Grassroots efforts spanned across the country, and people made over 180,000 phone calls to members of Congress—and more than one million petition signatures in opposition to cutting federal funds were delivered to the Capitol.
"Ever since the Trump administration came into power, so many more folks have reached out to us and said, 'What can I do? How can I protect these health services and these health centers?'" said 25-year-old Raquel Cruz-Juarez, Planned Parenthood's lead organizer in Las Vegas. "New volunteers have sprung out of nowhere, and now they're leading their own actions."
Within Planned Parenthood's broader outreach structures, activists are specifically working toward protecting communities that are often marginalized and would stand to lose the most if the BCRA was to pass. One such group is Raíz, a collaborative effort between Planned Parenthood and members of the Latino community to make sure that their rights and their health care are not put in jeopardy.
"[These legislators] are not taking into consideration our people—their constituents," Melissa Garcia, a 27-year-old Raíz organizer in Tucson, Arizona, said. "The reality is that Latinas in the U.S. already face huge barriers to accessing health care. I can say that firsthand; I saw that in my own family.
"They're not looking at the constituents who are in these communities,” she added. “They’re sending the message that they are out of touch with the people that they should be representing."
In recent months Garcia has lead numerous action forums, town halls, and rallies—and even worked to make sure that Planned Parenthood representatives were constantly stationed at Senator Jeff Flake's Tucson office.
Even as Garcia joined the ranks of hundreds of thousands of other women making sure their voices are heard, Republicans in the Senate are still gearing up to hold a health care vote—despite not knowing which version of the bill they’d actually try to bring to the floor. But the women who’ve been leading the outreach efforts for months have no plans to stop their efforts anytime soon. If anything, the uncertainty has only made them more vigilant.
“We are reminding politicians: ‘Do your job, instead of trying to keep your job—or you won't have the job much longer,’” said Jhanavi Pathak, an organizer with Our Revolution, the advocacy group started by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who also saw, first hand, how arduous it can be to navigate the U.S. health care system when her father fought stage 4 kidney cancer. “No amount of campaign funding will make the American people forget their actions if they continue on their current path. Hell hath no fury like a united nation of women on a singular mission. In 2018, they will hear us roar.”
