Compass Gender: Former Planned Parenthood President Speaks at Georgetown

Former Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen spoke at Georgetown on February 6. (Wikimedia Commons)

Former Planned Parenthood President Dr. Leana Wen delivered a lecture to students at Georgetown University on February 6, speaking chiefly about the politicized state of healthcare in America. Invited by the Georgetown University Lecture Fund for a talk co-sponsored by the Georgetown University Students for Health and Medical Equity, Wen challenged students to think critically about the nature of healthcare services in America—especially women’s healthcare—and how society might reshape its mindset to solve fundamental problems of inequity, declining availability of services, and bodily autonomy. 

“How can we be brave?” Wen asked. “How do we be bold visionaries when we look at health?”

To answer her questions, Wen outlined a three-tiered ideological framework to adopt in order to take significant steps in healthcare policy and execution, noting that structural changes needed to occur urgently to save lives. Prior to presenting her framework around these “bold and brave” steps, she highlighted a number of statistics to capture the “state of emergency” America’s healthcare system has entered, particularly in terms of reproductive healthcare.

“There are six states in the country where there is only one reproductive health provider left. And in the last eight years, there have been nearly 500 laws passed that restrict abortion access in any way. Are there any other procedures that are regulated in this way?” Wen challenged. “One in four American women by 45 will have an abortion… reproductive health is really under threat.”

Wen leaned on her background to build her case throughout the hour-long talk. In addition to serving as president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America from September 2018 to July 2019, Wen served as health commissioner for the city of Baltimore for five years, where she led programming focused on tackling teen pregnancy, the 2015 Baltimore riots, and the spiking opioid crisis, among other issues. Wen also served as an emergency physician at a number of institutions, including George Washington University Hospital.

The first tier of Wen’s framework to address pressing healthcare issues centered around urgency. “First, we must do what we can now. We cannot wait.” Anecdotally, Wen detailed a program she developed dedicated to providing eyeglasses to nearly 10,000 elementary school-age children in Baltimore.

“Often, high tech solutions get the most press. But sometimes it’s these low-tech innovations that make the biggest difference.”

Wen recounted the city-wide “blanket prescription” for opioid overdose antidote Naloxone she wrote as Baltimore health commissioner, saving thousands of lives. “While we wait for societal change to occur, while we wait for things, how many people are going to die in front of us? And that applies to any issue we are in front of us.” 

Wen’s second ideological tier pivots around confronting disparity. “We must recognize that improving health is an important goal, but that alone is not enough. We specifically have to call out disparity in achieving health equity,” she said. Wen explained how infant and pregnancy-related mortality disproportionately affect Black mothers and their babies, with Black babies in Baltimore five times more likely to die than their white counterparts at the time she took over as health commissioner. Implementing nurse home visitor programs, group-based education services, free crib programs, and a host of other reforms, Wen and her team tackled the intersectional issue.

The final piece of her framework was about isolation. She said, “We need to stop the siloing of certain aspects of healthcare.” Wen criticized language usage and stigmatic social norms around addiction, as well as society’s inclination to politicize and isolate women’s health and reproductive care. Presenting her ideal formulation of healthcare, Wen described a highly intersectional form of care, where primary care physicians and OB/GYNs alike could and would offer cross-cutting services without legislative or structural barriers.

Wen argued, centrally, that politicizing women’s health and reproductive care—with pro-choice movements being associated strongly with the Democratic Party and pro-life advocates tying themselves to the Republican Party—has and will continue to hurt the wellbeing of women. Because health is highly “intersectional and complex,” the “siloing” effect of politicization detrimentally suppresses critical aspects of healthcare.

Discussing the state of healthcare as it stands today, Wen was adamant that change is possible. “We cannot sacrifice progress on the pillar of ideology.”