A lone female senator has been invited to a Senate meeting on health care

Impact

Senate Republicans have come under fire for their failure to include any women in the 13-person working group tasked with revising the American Health Care Act, an act that, if passed as is, would have disastrous consequences for women's access to health care

But despite a GOP aide's insistence that the party wouldn't get sucked into the "identity politics" of reckoning with the all-male committee — as well as Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn's (R-Texas) remark that rumors of including a woman for optics were "bogus" — Senate Republicans reportedly invited a female colleague to Tuesday's meeting on the bill. 

According to the Hill, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) was invited to sit in on the meeting but isn't sure whether she'll be a permanent member of the committee. 

Either way, Capito told reporters she'd been looking forward to discussing Medicaid, an issue of particular concern to her state.

Evan Vucci/AP

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein was among those who slammed the Senate committee, wondering aloud in a Sunday interview on Meet the Press how the 13 male legislators plan to "sit down and put something together" without their female colleagues.

"Women's health is a big part of this," she said, "and women are a majority of the population and their health interests deserve to be contemplated in any reform."

The day before, Feinstein's colleague Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) wrote on Twitter, "The GOP is crafting policy on an issue that directly impacts women without including a single woman in the process." 

She added, "It's wrong."