Women’s health in America is often framed as a matter of access, but the deeper problem runs through nearly every layer of medicine and public life. Women’s pain is routinely minimized. Their symptoms are dismissed. Their bodies are legislated, scrutinized, and researched less thoroughly than men’s. From endometriosis to maternal mortality to gender-affirming care, the gaps are not isolated failures. They are structural ones.

This week, Lauren Rankin examines what meaningful change would actually require. Experts say improving women’s health means more than expanding care. It demands sustained investment in research, stronger social safety nets, bodily autonomy, and a cultural shift that treats women’s lived experiences as medically and politically authoritative.

Bailey Staff was an active child, a competitive dancer, a first-degree black belt, and horserider. “I did everything under the sun,” she said—until she was 15 years old. She began to have constant pain in her right knee, and no matter what she did, it wouldn’t go away. She went to her primary care doctor, hoping that he would have some answers. Instead, he told her that her BMI was low and she was anorexic, which is probably why she was in pain.

Six months later, she began to experience a lack of feeling in her right leg. When she went back to the referred doctor, insisting something was wrong, he shrugged. Staff knew something was wrong with her body; she just couldn’t get her doctor to believe her.

Read the full feature here.

When I posted asking women to share their experiences navigating the health care system and feeling dismissed, I didn’t expect to be deluged by more than 100 responses. But that speaks to the difficulty of being a woman in America right now, and trying to live a healthy and full life. So many of them just expressed gratitude at being heard by someone. Many women feel left behind and forgotten.

There is obviously very little political will right now to make some of these changes, but many of them are simply how we even see these problems. Women deserve to be believed, to be heard and validated. Our stories and our experiences matter, and even in a world where we can’t increase funding for women’s health needs or eradicate abortion bans, we can at least begin to move the needle on how we see and perceive women. That’s my hope. 

— Lauren Rankin

Under Trump, federal immigration powers have accelerated into aggressive raids, swelling detention populations, weakened oversight, and a federal enforcement apparatus that critics increasingly describe as authoritarian. But advocates and legal experts argue this system is not inevitable. Next week, we examine what it would actually take to rein in ICE.