The other members of the group are Brigitte Macron of France, Emine Gulbaran Erdogan of Turkey, Melania Trump of the US, Queen Mathilde herself, Ingrid Schulerud, partner of Secretary General of the UN Jens Stoltenberg, Desislava Radeva of Bulgaria, Amelie Derbaudrenghien, the wife of Belgium's Prime Minister, Mojca Stropnik of Slovenia, and Thora Margret Baldvinsdottir of Iceland.
However, this is clearly a more significant image because it makes a few major messages. First, clearly it sends a good message to the world when the leader of a country has reached a level of acceptance to the point where a significant security conference of western leaders includes a homosexual couple. However, at the same time, this picture represents the same deep problem that we are faced with when examining all of the portraits of US presents - all of our leaders are men. This picture would be much more encouraging if anywhere near half of the people pictured were male.
Further, this picture links to the issue facing the US in its work on Health Care currently. With virtually no female lawmakers or representative members able to give input in the formulation of the law, naturally the law would contain virtually no protections for women who would need health care. The AHCA seeks to make several moves against services for women. For example, it seeks to strip all funding from Planned Parenthood, even the funding necessary to provide women with mammograms (screenings important in detecting breast cancer). What's more, on the list of pre-existing conditions being cut under the AHCA many are women-specific such as birth-control, prenatal and maternal care. The bill seeks to slash funding for Medicaid by $880 billion over the course of ten years, a move that would disproportionately effect minority women, who are more likely to be insured through Medicaid.
And continuing the note of stripping protections for women giving birth, the US is currently one of a mere eight countries in the world where the rates of women who die during childbirth is rising, other countries including Afghanistan and South Sudan. To put this in perspective, in 1987 the infant mortality rate was 7.2 per 100,000 births, however by 2011 the rate was 17.8. To be clear, there is no one clear reason for which this can be explained, as things like complications from increased rates of obesity, childbirth at an older age, and the lack of affordability of health care, and a large increase in the need to perform a cesarean section during birth. Significantly, one Dr. Michael Brodman found when researching the impact obesity has on childbirths that there is an extreme range in the US when it comes to the quality of health care provided to women undergoing prenatal and maternal care, meaning that the way a patient is treated in one state or even one county could be wildly different from the way they are treated elsewhere, even if they have the same condition, and that's a major problem.
"In the United States," Brodman said, "there's thinking such as, no one tells me to wear a helmet when I'm riding my motorcycle. I am allowed to do what I want,' that kind of mentality. Well, doctors have that, too, and in reality, it doesn't work in health care."
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