WASHINGTON.- The winning actress Oscar Halle Berry supported on Thursday a bill promoted by senators Americans to allocate tens of millions of dollars to menopause research and education.
“We have to eliminate the shame of menopause. We have to talk about this very normal part of our lives,” said the Hollywood star, who won the Oscar for best actress in 2001 for the romantic drama Monster’s Ball.
The bill, co-sponsored by Democratic and Republican senators, allocates $275 million to research, awareness and training of health professionals to address the hormonal change that women go through.
“Menopause is not a dirty word. It’s not something to be ashamed of,” Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state, said during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol. “It’s not something that Congress or the federal government should ignore.”
Berry’s fight
The measure does not yet have a clear path to President Joe Biden’s desk, but Murray and his colleagues said the goal is to get as many cosponsors as possible before asking for it to come up for a vote in the Senate.
Berry, 57, the first and still only black woman to win an Oscar for best actress, has spoken openly about her own experiences with menopause and said the issue needs to be destigmatized.
The actress, whose films include the series X-Men, the 2002 James Bond film Die another day y Catwoman (2004), told reporters that her doctor refused to use the word “menopause” in front of her.
“I finally realized I wasn’t going to say it. So I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to have to do what no man can do: I have to say it. I said, ‘I’m in menopause.'”
Source: AFP
