Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Director Jennifer Klein at the North Carolina Conference for Women

Good afternoon, everyone!  Thank you, Attorney General Stein, for that kind introduction and for your tireless efforts to protect and defend the rights of women.  As a State Senator and as Attorney General, you have been a champion for women and families.

I also want to thank Governor Cooper.  From reproductive freedom and women’s health, to Medicaid expansion, to child care and education – your Governor has been a fierce champion for women and families across North Carolina and a model for states around the country. 

And to the North Carolina Council for Women for inviting me to join you today and for your critical work to expand rights and opportunity for women.  It is wonderful to be surrounded by so many dedicated leaders and advocates at this year’s Women’s Conference in the great state of North Carolina.

North Carolina has an important place in the history of our nation’s fight for women’s rights and equality.  From trailblazers like North Carolina’s Gertrude Weil, a fearless suffragist, to Lilian Clement, the first woman elected to the North Carolina General Assembly in 1920, only a few months after the 19th amendment was passed, to Cheri Beasley, who recently became the first African American woman to serve as Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. These women are a testament to the resilience, determination, and leadership of North Carolinians.

Each of you is honoring that history and their legacy by continuing the fight for women’s rights and gender equity.  And your work will benefit not only this generation of women but also the next – for our daughters and our granddaughters.  The work you are doing is especially important at this moment, when in our nation and around the world, women are facing threats to their fundamental rights, including reproductive freedom.

As you’ve heard, I lead the first-ever Gender Policy Council at the White House – which President Biden established in March of 2021 to advance gender equity and equality across the Administration’s domestic and foreign policy.  The first thing we did was to create the first National Gender Strategy, which outlines ten comprehensive areas – to advance human rights and opportunity for women and girls in the United States and around the world, and which is really a plan for the work we are doing at the federal level.  The criticism we received immediately – it was too ambitious – to which I responded “guilty as charged.”

I spend much of my time working on three priorities – domestically and globally: strengthening women’s economic security; preventing and responding to gender-based violence; and advancing women’s health.  I thought I would take a few minutes this afternoon to tell you a bit about what we’ve done, why it matters, and what comes next.

Starting with reproductive freedom, which I honestly didn’t imagine in 2021, as I thought through the agenda and vision for gender equity and equality in the Biden-Harris Administration, that it would be the fight of our lives, that we would be again fighting for freedom that our mothers and grandmothers had fought for and won years before.  Today, in the United States, one in three women of reproductive age live in a state where abortion is banned.  And as you all know all too well, beyond this striking statistic – are millions of women whose lives and health are now at risk since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, paving the way for Republican elected officials to adopt or enforce extreme abortion bans.  Millions of women can no longer obtain the care they need during a miscarriage or other pregnancy-related complication—or make deeply personal decisions about their future and their lives—because of the dangerous abortion bans now in effect all across the country, including right here in North Carolina.

In fact, many of the states with the highest rates of maternal mortality have extreme and dangerous abortion bans in effect. This should not be a surprise.  Abortion bans are forcing providers to close, which disrupts access to critical health care services—from abortion to contraception to other essential health care.  We are also seeing doctors uproot their families and leave states with abortion bans out of fear of being prosecuted for providing the care they were trained to provide, making it even harder for residents to get the care they need. 

Governor Cooper and I met yesterday with health care providers – and of course, we heard that the effects of SB 20 have been very similar.  These professionals have been on the frontlines.  And so has the Governor – fighting against SB 20 as it moved through the state legislature and vetoing it when it reached his desk.  Despite the state legislature’s override, we all know that the fight must continue to protect women’s health and reproductive freedom in North Carolina.

In the face of these unrelenting attacks on women’s rights, I can assure you that President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the whole Administration are working day in and day out to defend – and expand – reproductive freedom and to advance equity for women and girls.  

I will never forget standing in the Oval Office with President Biden within an hour of the Dobbs decision coming down.  He was the first person that I heard say that the Supreme Court had done what they had never done before — take away a fundamental constitutional right.

The President asked us to respond quickly and aggressively to Dobbs.  Since the Supreme Court’s decision, he has signed three Executive Orders and a Presidential Memorandum to safeguard access to reproductive health care.  We are continuing to expand access to medication abortion, fight for women to get the emergency abortion care they need, safeguard the right to travel, strengthen access to contraception and IVF, bolster privacy protections for patients and providers, and protect access to reproductive health care for veterans and service members.

And the Vice President has, since day one, taken the lead in the Administration to defend reproductive freedom – and to work with state leaders — Governors, Attorney’s General, state legislators, advocates, health care providers, patients, civil rights leaders, the faith community, and more – to join together to restore reproductive freedom for all women in all states across the country.

But as the President also made clear on the day Dobbs came down, the only way to restore access to abortion and reproductive health care across the country is to pass a national law restoring reproductive freedom.  And that is what this President and Vice President will continue to fight for – so that this President, or the next one, can sign it into law.

As I’ve emphasized, women’s health is a major priority—and this goes beyond reproductive health; from reducing health disparities to combating the maternal health crisis to lowering costs to increasing access to care.

The President and Vice President are making healthcare more affordable for women.  They have stood firm against Big Pharma and lowered costs for prescription drugs.  For example, earlier this month, we announced lower prices for the first 10 drugs selected for Medicare price negotiation. This includes drugs used to treat many common diseases and conditions that affect women—like blood clots, diabetes, heart disease, and autoimmune conditions.  Together, these drugs are taken by9 million seniors, including 4.5 million women, who will soon see savings.

We have also lowered health care premiums under the Affordable Care Act to help millions of women and working families save an average of $800 per year on health insurance premiums.  We are working to ensure that medical debt can no longer be used against your credit score and supporting states like North Carolina in canceling medical debt for residents, which Governor Cooper announced earlier this month. 

And more states have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, including to more than a half a million North Carolinians thanks to the leadership of Governor Cooper and many of you in this room.  And hundreds of thousands of new moms, including right here in North Carolina, now have Medicaid postpartum coverage for 12 months.

This progress notwithstanding, we know there is more work to do to lower health care costs and expand access to care—which is why the President and Vice President will continue the fight to negotiate the prices of even more prescription drugs, cap out-of-pocket drug costs for those with private health insurance, extend health insurance savings under the Affordable Care Act, close the Medicaid coverage gap once and for all, and cap monthly insulin costs at $35 dollars for all Americans.

In addition to prioritizing access, affordability, and equity, we are investing in the next generation of breakthroughs and innovations for women’s health. Because we know we have much more work to do when it comes to research on women’s health and prevention.

That is why I am honored to help lead the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, which was launched last year by the President and First Lady—to get women the answers they deserve about their health and to fundamentally change how we approach and fund women’s health research.

For far too long, women have been underrepresented in health research.  Despite recent progress, there is too much we don’t know about preventing, diagnosing, and treating a wide range of health conditions in women—from endometriosis to fibroids to Alzheimer’s to heart disease.  And menopause!

I suspect it is the first time that an executive order ever used the word “menopause!” And we were thrilled to include it because it is long past time to invest in the research needed to get women the answers they deserve, at every stage of life but especially women’s midlife health.

In response, agencies across the federal government, including the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, are taking action to close gaps in women’s health research.  These agencies are prioritizing investments in women’s health—like a new $100 million Sprint for Women’s Health from ARPA-H and a new $200 million effort from the National Institutes of Health to fund cross-cutting research.  Finally, we are calling on Congress for the bold and transformative proposals that we need—$12 billion in new funding for women’s health research at the National Institutes of Health.

Turning to economic security…The Administration is also investing in America’s future by ensuring women have access to good jobs, equal pay, and workplaces free from discrimination.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, women’s labor force participation had plummeted to its lowest level in over 30 years.  Our Administration and Democrats in Congress fought to center gender equity in the recovery efforts and secured historic investments in the care economy.  Through the American Rescue Plan, which helped keep more than 220,000 child care programs open, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act – we now have the highest women’s labor force participation in recorded history.

In addition to historic job-creating legislation, the President has also signed bipartisan laws to support women workers.  As just two examples, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act provide basic long-overdue protections for pregnant and post-partum workers.  These laws help ensure that more pregnant women can stay in the workplace by providing the common-sense support they need to maintain their health and their job —like a stool to sit on at the register or water at their side.  And they help ensure that a new mom will be afforded the decency and privacy she deserves to pump while at work.

The Biden-Harris Administration is also firmly committed to building the care economy and supporting caregivers and care workers—unsung heroes who are predominantly women and women of color.  We have made some progress—from adding $1 billion to the Child Care Development Block Grant and Head Start…to a new rule spurred by the President’s 2023 Executive Order that lowers child care costs for more than 100,000 working families…to investing in the National Family Caregiver Support Program to provide counseling and training to family and other informal care providers.

These are just some of the actions we are taking now.  But we will never stop fighting for the long-term investments in care that we know we need.  Like a national, comprehensive paid family and medical leave program.  And access to quality affordable child care.  Because we know that these policies strengthen workers and their families, businesses, and our economy as a whole. 

Lastly, I want to underscore the importance of preventing and ending gender-based violence—which has been a cornerstone of the President and Vice President’s careers—in our collective fight for gender equity and equality.  As the leaders in this room know, gender-based violence is a public safety and public health crisis.  It affects individuals of all backgrounds and in urban, suburban, rural, and Tribal communities across the nation and around the world.  And it prevents women and girls, in particular, from thriving.

Thanks in large part to courageous survivors and advocates, we have made significant progress in the 30 years since President Biden wrote and championed the landmark Violence Against Women Act in 1994, a law that fundamentally changed how our nation thinks about and treats domestic violence and other forms of violence against women and girls. 

Since then, President Biden has worked across the aisle to reauthorize and strengthen the law he championed first as a U.S. Senator.  And, in 2022, he signed into law the strongest reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act to date—with enhanced survivor protections and more funding than ever before for the law’s implementation.

And that’s not all:

President Biden has championed bipartisan reforms to the military’s investigation and prosecution of sexual assault and sexual harassment.

He signed the historic Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant legislation to reduce gun violence in nearly 30 years that narrowed the so-called boyfriend loophole to help keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers.

His Administration expanded funding for campus sexual assault prevention—and restored and strengthened vital protections under Title IX that were weakened by the prior Administration. 

And, President Biden is addressing the new and ever-changing forms of gender-based violence – including harassment and abuse online, which is only getting more dangerous in the era of AI.

Even with this significant progress to expand services and legal protections for survivors, much work remains.  The President and Vice President are committed to ending gender-based violence wherever it occurs—whether at home, at work, in schools, in the military, in communities, or online.  And our Administration will continue to center survivors and their families, focus on prevention, and prioritize economic security, housing stability, and other supports that we know survivors need.  

As the President has said, “As long as there are women in this country and around the world who live in fear of violence, there’s more we have to do to fulfill this sacred commitment.”

So my message today is that we have made progress.  Each of the Administration accomplishments I’ve talked about today has been made possible because we have a President and a Vice President who have fought for the rights of women their entire careers.  Simply put, President Biden and Vice President Harris have made certain that women are at the heart of everything we do.  And insisted that women are seated at every decision-making table.  From the establishment of the Gender Policy Council….to a record number of female cabinet secretaries…to leaders like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson…to Vice President Harris herself.

Also importantly, we have made progress together by partnering with so many leaders in this room and across our nation.  We have learned from the work you – and other state leaders have done – passing and implementing strong laws and policies on, for example, paid leave, early childhood education and childcare, reproductive and maternal health care.

But, from restoring reproductive freedom to bolstering women’s economic security, we also recognize there is much more work to do to ensure equal rights and opportunities, to put laws and policies in place that support women and families, and to change our culture, the norms that allow gender and racial inequity to persist in the United States and around the world.

And, to accomplish all of those goals, we need to do more to increase representation in our political system.  To ensure that people across this country have the opportunity to make their voices heard.

I know that all of you in this room are fighting these fights, day in and day out.  And I want you to know that President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the whole Administration are advocating right alongside you. 

We will continue to put women and girls at the heart of everything we do.  And, we will continue to enhance women’s civic and political leadership because as Vice President Harris says, “the status of women is the status of democracy.”

So as I look at the leaders and advocates around this room, I will leave you with a call to action.  A call to everyone here to become even more active – though I suspect that you are doing it all already.  From engaging your friends and neighbors to joining and leading civic organizations, to helping others to participate and make their voices heard, to running for office at all levels, we need more women involved.

As we know all too well from history, progress is not linear. But, we also know that we can’t rest: women are always at the forefront of progress.

So, let’s take inspiration from the champions who have come before us – in this state and around the country – as we navigate this inflection point in our nation’s history and continue fighting for the next generation of women.

Thank you again for inviting me to speak and for the work you do every single day.