An unexpected winner in the midterms: public health

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Opinion by Michelle A. Williams

I’m not talking about specific candidates, as important as those races are. I’m talking about the ethos of public health — the principle that health is a fundamental human right and the understanding that we must look out for one another, to think not just about our own well-being, but about the public good.

That ethos has been in retreat for the past two years, beaten back by the forces proclaiming that individual freedom trumps all. In one of many low points, protestors targeted a breast cancer clinic in Los Angeles for requiring masks to protect their patients, many of whom had weakened immune systems as a result of chemotherapy and were therefore at higher risk from COVID. This failure of empathy has been deeply disheartening.

Yet as I’ve tracked election results over the past week, I’ve found many reasons for optimism. In blue states and in red states, voters made choices that reflected care and concern for their fellow citizens. Again and again, they voted to protect public health. In an extension of that trend, voters also opted to use the levers of government to extend dignity to individuals in bleak circumstances, such as extreme poverty, crushing debt and imprisonment.

The most high-profile examples of public health wins are the abortion referendums. Voters in California, Michigan and Vermont endorsed women’s right to choose. In conservative Kentucky and Montana, too, abortion rights supporters scored clear victories on ballot measures. This clean sweep for reproductive freedom in the midterms follows a resounding win for abortion rights supporters in a statewide referendum in Kansas in August. These successes are critically important for public health because restrictions on abortion put women’s lives, health and economic futures at risk, and are particularly dangerous for low-income women and women of color.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/an-unexpected-winner-in-the-midterms-public-health/ar-AA14bv7z

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. +1 that sanity prevailed to at least some extent. . . nt

[central scrutinizer]

2. Oregon ballot measure 111

Enshrined the right to affordable health care into the state constitution.

Amends the Oregon Constitution to require the state to ensure that every resident has access to affordable health care as a fundamental right.