NIH and NSF: Stop cutting women's health research

The petition to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation reads:

Hold the line. Refuse to eliminate grants and/or research funding for projects or organizations simply because they include the word “women,” “female,” “trans,” or any other term from the leaked list of banned words for government-funded research.

Women and gender-expansive people are already extremely underrepresented in scientific studies and struggle to even be believed by their doctors about health problems. We’ve made significant progress in the last few decades but still have a long way to go. Only now, Trump and his MAGA regime want to undo those decades of progress and keep us out of research entirely.

You read that right: The Trump administration wants to cut all scientific research focused on women’s health and other crucial health topics, and has instructed government health agencies to block grants that include the word “women,” “trans,” or “female.”

How did we get here? On President Donald Trump’s first two days in office, he signed three executive orders (EOs) among many others that aimed to roll back all government-funded programs that promote DEI and to withdraw recognition of transgender (and intersex) people.

We knew that these EOs’ implications would be significant, but in February, a brave researcher leaked the list of words that the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health (NIH) are using to decide what grants and projects get cut. Among those words are “women,” “female,” “trans,” “racial,” and “diversity.”

These EOs are currently all being challenged in multiple court cases. And yet, OUR health institutions--created to protect the health and well being of every American--have already cut BILLIONS of dollars in funding for women's health and other crucial topics under the mandate of these EOs. 

Both the NIH and the NSF know that gutting or halting research on women’s and LGBTQ+ health issues would endanger our lives. That’s why we need to show these institutions that we are watching, push them to do the right thing, and hold the line. History will remember the choice they make.