When I was 11 years old, I started bleeding. I never stopped.

I had gotten my period; a milestone in every young girl’s life, but a gravestone for mine. 

Mine was less of a period and more of an ellipsis; it was interminable. As my little trash bin overflowed with purple plastic wrappers, my fear surged. When my pediatrician dismissed my symptoms and concerns as normal menstrual irregularities and told me to wait it out, I glanced nervously at my bright pink Casio watch. How much longer could I go on like this?

In the end, it took me over 100 bloody days to get diagnosed with one of the most common yet misdiagnosed gynecological diseases today: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). My case is a textbook example of PCOS, but medical ignorance and dismissal ruined my life. My self-image changed permanently, and my mental health suffered a massive blow.

My doctor’s ignorance is only one example of the far-reaching inequity women experience in healthcare. It’s a disparity that is only set to worsen with two recent Trump administration executive orders: a language-limiting executive order that seeks to eliminate medical education and research related to certain population groups — including women, people of color and LGBTQ+ people — due to an association with “wokeness.” Another Trump order targeted funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) under the mandate of broad cost-cutting measures from the administration.

Although a federal judge blocked the funding cuts, reports still indicate that the NIH has continued to pull funding from projects with the reasoning that they arebanning the “problematic language” Trump defined in his  anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) order, which defied the judge’s orders. Additionally, the Centers for Disease Control has already withdrawn studies containing flagged language from publication to remain under Trump’s guidelines.

On the list of flagged terms under Trump’s anti-DEI order are the words, “female,” “females,” “biologically female,” “women” and “women and underrepresented.” Studies and curricula that include these words address a fatal and systemic gap in healthcare for women. Ironically, these attempts at equity are being accused of the opposite. 

From the beginning, medical sexism has driven doctors to Washington, D.C.

Dr. Leah Kaufman is an associate professor and the vice chair of education at Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine. She is also the New York State treasurer for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). On Tuesday, she joined other physician members of ACOG and traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress for greater protection of women’s health.

From Long Island, N.Y., her lobbying takes on an underrated angle: advocating for gynecology in rural medicine.

“When patients go to Eastern Long Island Hospital, there’s no OBG, there’s no labor and delivery unit, but they may show up there actively laboring because they’re on the North Fork of Long Island. The next hospital’s 40 minutes away,” Dr. Kaufman said. “They may have to deliver that baby. They may have to deal with that hemorrhage.”

Laboring without appropriate medical care is a major contributing factor in the 144% increase in maternal mortality rates in the U.S. This statistic paints a picture of tumbleweeds and farmland, but in reality, maternal care deserts span most of the U.S.

“I have [pregnant] residents who are afraid to go take their boards in Dallas,” Dr. Kaufman said. “And of what may happen to them if they have to seek treatment there.”

Dallas, Texas, is identified on a 2024 map from maternal care advocacy nonprofit March of Dimes as a maternal care desert.

Women’s health emergencies precede labor and delivery. A common catch-all solution for menstrual issues in young girls and women is birth control. Oral contraceptives are often used to regulate or stop bleeding for young people experiencing heavy or prolonged periods, or a menstrual disorder such as PCOS or endometriosis. Oral contraceptives come with a wide range of side effects, from osteoporosis to depression, and heightened risks of strokes, blood clots and heart attacks.

For years, despite the widespread public distress and fear surrounding oral contraceptives, they have remained the primary option for menstrual regulation and contraction. A 2025 report from the British Pregnancy Advisory Services found that one in seven women surveyed were “unhappy with the side effects of their current contraception.”

Recent research has uncovered a potential alternative PCOS treatment: mesenchymal stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles (MSC-derived EV injections). However, this study only revealed preliminary results; MSC-derived EV injections have not been tested on humans. Its path forward will depend on grants and funding, which are jeopardized not only by Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders but also by the administration’s halting of funding grants from the NIH.

“For some people here, this can mean losing up to half their salary,” Lisa Benz Scott said.

Benz Scott is the executive director of Stony Brook’s Program in Public Health. She oversees dozens of studies at Stony Brook — some of which are now in danger. SUNY Chancellor John B. King, Jr. released a statement on Feb. 10 highlighting the impact the funding stop will have on the SUNY system at large. According to King, “The SUNY Research Foundation’s initial estimate is that the change … will cost SUNY research an estimated $79 million for current grants, including more than $21 million over just the next five months (through June 30).”

Research stoppage will disproportionately affect women, especially since women are a vastly understudied population in health research. According to an article by the Association of American Medical Colleges writer Bridget Balch, “As recently as 2019, women accounted for roughly 40% of participants in clinical trials for three of the diseases that most affect women — cancer, cardiovascular disease, and psychiatric disorders — despite representing 51% of the U.S. population, according to a 2022 study.”

This is partly a result of a historical misconception that women and men only differ in their reproductive systems; in reality, sex accounts for a large variance in drug effectiveness and reactions. Additionally, when testing at the animal level, cost is often a factor; buying and testing on only male mice is cheaper and eliminates the ‘confounding variable’ of female hormones.

Another factor is the historical precedent of U.S. law venturing into medical regulation, specifically in the Food and Drug Administration’s 1977 policy, which forbids the inclusion of women of childbearing age in Phase I and II drug trials. Though overturned in 1993 by Congress’ National Institute of Health Revitalization Act, women have still been consistently excluded from clinical trials.

While reproductive health is an aspect of women’s health, it is far from being the most important. 

“What’s the leading cause of death for women?” Ananya Madhira, a junior majoring in biology, chemistry and biomedical engineering, asked. “Everybody says ‘breast cancer,’ or something reproductive related. But no, it’s cardiovascular disease, because it’s the leading cause of death for everyone. Even from a medical perspective, it’s never [considered] that women are people; their health matters beyond that.”

Madhira, also the president of Stony Brook’s chapter of the Phi Delta Epsilon medical fraternity, speaks to a far-reaching attitude in medicine: that women are reduced to agents of fertility. To this end, a recent article from The New York Times revealed the surgical impact this perception has had on women who unknowingly receive oophorectomies with hysterectomies. For generations, doctors have deemed ovaries unnecessary when not accompanied by uteri due to the lack of childbearing potential. Oophorectomies cause menopause and chronic conditions, including depression, arthritis, asthma, coronary artery disease and osteoporosis. A 2010 study also connected bilateral oophorectomies to increased risk of Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

Essentially, the danger goes beyond gynecological and obstetric diseases.

Heart disease, not ovarian or breast cancer, is the leading cause of death among women. Women are also far more likely than men to experience morbidity-driven diseases; therefore, despite women having a longer life expectancy, they will be plagued throughout by health issues. Morbidity-driven diseases accompany women from diagnosis to death. This disproportionate burden is driven by sexism not only in diagnosis and treatment but also evaluation and care.

A year before I got my period and PCOS diagnosis, I got my first symptom: a terrible headache.

I sat in the corner of my daycare center; my head rested on the cool plastic of the desk, eyes tightly shut. Inches away from my head lay a small cup of mandarin oranges, our after-school snack of the day. I couldn’t bring myself to even look at them; not only did I loathe mandarins, but my eyes throbbed in sync with the ticking clock on the wall.

My first migraine. Little did I know, it would be far from the last. 

Over the next decade of my life, I would miss weeks, sometimes months, of school due to chronic, debilitating migraines. They only worsened as I picked up new symptoms. I was dying in slow motion; my body slowly shutting down, and my legs were the first to go. My back started to ache, up and down my spine. I began to feel the pressure of nausea against my stomach and chest, so strong I almost cried from it. My joints swelled. My vision blurred.

It has been a decade now since that first migraine. I received a diagnosis three months before my 20th birthday, but I barely remember what it feels like to not be in pain anymore.

During that time, I met countless doctors. Most would try, with varying degrees of subtlety, to diagnose me with anxiety. They would stumble through my name, shoot sidelong glances at my parents and ask me how many classes and extracurriculars I was taking. The underlying message: I, as an Indian-American girl, must be breaking down under academic pressure from my parents.

Female pain is often dismissed. Despite the fact that 70% of people suffering from chronic pain are women, 80% of studies focus on males, either humans or rodents. If their pain is acknowledged, doctors frequently attribute it to mental illness, just as I experienced. Author of “The Pain Gap,” Anushay Hossain, called it a “credibility gap” in an interview with The Washington Post. Women are simply not believed when they report pain.

This is nothing new. We women have been deemed hysterical since the 18th-century association of uterine conditions with “hysteria,” which shares etymological roots with the term “hysterectomy.” Not much has changed in the ensuing three centuries, evidently. Trump’s anti-DEI and NIH funding slashes, executive orders and the misogynist cultures the Trump administration and his supporters perpetuate pose a real danger to patients and their care.

Furthermore, traces of indifference, or deprioritization, of sociological and gender-based approaches to healthcare can be found at all levels of the medical field, from pre-medical students and above.

“I’m not in any sort of sociological classes or research or concentration,” Madhira said. “I know there’s a women’s health minor here. I know some people who do it, but I mean, any sociology minor is not respected [by pre-med students]. People think it’s an easy add-on.”

Sargam Panpaliya, a third-year student at Stony Brook’s Renaissance School of Medicine, offered regional insight. Panpaliya did her undergraduate studies in Chicago, Ill., and found her peers there to be more sensitive to equity issues in healthcare. Comparatively, she has found her Long Island, N.Y., peers to be far more neutral or even negative on these issues.

“Someone asked me once what field of medicine I wanted to pursue,” Panpaliya said. “They walked away when I said I was interested in fertility medicine.”

Panpaliya and many of her peers take an impassioned stance on women’s health and the social determinants of health in general. They express that passion through their participation in the medical school’s Medicine in Contemporary Society (MCS) courses designed to introduce medical students to compassionate care. However, prevailing attitudes in government consistently hold them back. Without DEI programs at universities, admissions of minorities will decrease.

“I don’t know who’s going to be advocating for us [without the DEI office],” Panpaliya said.

Without female providers, mortality rates are expected to increase by an estimated 0.23%.

We’re dying here. Why does nobody care?