WASHINGTON — First Lady Melania Trump called it a turning point. “This is a transformative moment for women in America,” she said Monday at the White House, where President Trump signed the women’s health executive order she championed. “Beginning today, we will change the reality of women’s health.”
“Previous generations fought for women’s rights,” the First Lady said. “Our generation will fight to discover the cures that will ensure a woman can live her life in health and to the fullest.” She said the order “establishes a new standard for women’s health in America,” and that super intelligence, advanced biotechnology and groundbreaking therapies give the nation “a unique chance to reinvent women’s healthcare.”
With the new White House Women’s Health Task Force set to hold its first working session Monday afternoon, she gave its members a clear assignment: her “First Lady’s Five Pillars of Women’s Health Innovation.” First, direct research funding toward cures for diseases that affect women in a unique way. Second, use super intelligence to understand female biology better and speed up medical discoveries, “all to the benefit of women.” Third, move promising therapies from laboratories to female patients faster, “while still keeping strict safety standards.”
Fourth, make sure medical breakthroughs are “accessible and affordable to women, regardless of their financial circumstances.” And fifth, “replace generations of silence with open conversation, education, and compassion.” The mission, she said, must serve women at every stage of life, “from young girls just starting out to mothers dealing with a complex range of responsibilities, to mature women who deserve to have vitality, dignity, and independence.”
She closed with a line every American woman can claim. “We are women. We are resilient, capable, and deserving of lives defined not by the burdens we carry, but by the possibilities before us,” the First Lady said. In her prepared remarks, she thanked the President “for his support and for signing this very important Executive Order.”
The President returned the praise. “Melania works so hard, you wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “And she’s accomplished so much in a very short period of time. So I think everybody here very much appreciates the job you do.”
