People, do you think all this would have happened if there were women drafting the health care bill? Two of the Republican women in the Senate, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, are longtime defenders of Planned Parenthood. Collins has been in office for 20 years and Murkowski 15. Both of them are on the committee that handles health bills. But neither of them was regarded as worthy to attend those secret meetings. Ted Cruz was invited. Ted Cruz who is still in his first term, who all the other Republicans loathe. Ted Cruz who, when the bill was finally made public, instantly announced it wasn’t conservative enough.

Everyone expects Cruz to eventually come around after he garners a sufficient pile of attention. When the Republican senators met for lunch this week, he passed around a list of changes that would put him on a “path to ‘yes.’” We can only imagine how thrilled his colleagues must have been to get the directives.

So that’s Ted Cruz. But Mitch McConnell is sensitive to his feelings about wanting to be in the room where it happens. While totally freezing out the women.

“I am not a reporter, and I am not a lobbyist, so I’ve seen nothing,” said Murkowski tartly. Perhaps somewhat overestimating the Republican leadership’s concern for reporters.

So what are we supposed to do about all this? Well, there’s always social media. And Murray has been urging people to write to their senators. This makes a lot of sense if you happen to live in, say, Arizona. It’s a little harder to see the point if you’re from Washington, where your senator is Patty Murray.

Murray, in a phone interview, argued that wherever they’re directed, protest calls help create a sense of national outcry, like the post-inauguration women’s marches. Senators might ignore it, she added, but they “certainly can’t say, ‘I never heard about it.’”

Although, of course, some of them could just go into a room with the other guys and close the door.