Supporting Uterine Fibroid Research and Education

Floor Speech

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of a critical issue facing women's health that is often misunderstood, grossly underfunded, and has significant ripple effects on a woman's physical and mental health. This condition is uterine fibroids: noncancerous growths in the uterus that can cause severe bleeding, body pain, infertility and miscarriages, and several other consequences.

Uterine fibroids affect 70 percent of White women and 80 percent of Black women in the U.S. during their lifetime. Each year, over 200,000 women undergo hysterectomies for uterine fibroids, with Black women twice as likely to undergo this treatment to alleviate symptoms. We need to do more for these women. Other treatments exist, and we cannot allow a lack of awareness to put women through an unnecessary, lifechanging operation. We do not need to deprive women of their right to have children, to instruct them to sit home for six weeks and recover from such an invasive procedure, to put them at risk of complications.

More must be done to research uterine fibroids, educate health care professionals, and raise awareness for patients. I am proud to cosponsor H.R. 2007, the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Uterine Fibroid Research and Education Act of 2021, as it would expand and coordinate uterine fibroid research at NIH and direct HHS to issue an awareness campaign and research Medicaid coverage of uterine fibroids. We are in Women's Health Month. In this Month, we reflect upon the important women in our lives, and how medical research must better represent them. I am proud to support the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Uterine Fibroid Research and Education Act of 2021 and urge my colleagues to join me. This condition cannot wait, women suffering with this condition cannot wait, and this bill cannot wait.

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