In January, America will seat a record number of women in Congress. It's an encouraging trend, but one driven almost entirely by one party. On female representation, the Republican Party lost ground.

This is surely in part the impact of having a president and party leader who has demonstrated overt hostility toward women for years. Donald Trump isn't anyone's idea of a recruiting draw for female candidates — or voters. It's also no coincidence that the policy issue on which the GOP was most vulnerable in the midterms — health care — is one that poll after poll shows is especially important to women.

If the basic moral imperative of universal health care wasn't enough to get Republicans to work in good faith with Democrats on this issue, maybe the imperative of long-term political survival will be.

A record 116 women were elected to Congress this year. The new Congress to be seated in January will include 24 female senators and 102 female House members, comprising almost one-quarter of each chamber. Women are still woefully under-represented, but these are the strongest congressional numbers for women at any time in America's history.

Behind those numbers, though, is a startling divide: The increases were driven almost entirely by Democrats. In the House, Republican women's representation will actually drop significantly, from the current 23 to 13 — a loss that Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Missouri, terms "devastating."

Democrats elected an astounding 89 women to the House. That's indicative of a more-cohesive-than-usual female vote in an election where health care was a constant Democratic campaign theme. Polls show that women — who are more likely than men to be low-income, and more often the ones making family health care decisions — support the concept of universal health care more than men do.

Republicans, having spent years pledging to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, finally had the numbers in the current session of Congress to do something themselves on health care. So what did Republicans do once in the driver's seat? They tried to repeal the ACA but failed. Their own legislation, which pretended to provide wider coverage, in fact would have narrowed it. They settled for a long siege to sabotage Obamacare with legislative changes, funding cuts and a multistate lawsuit of which, shamefully, Missouri is still a party.

The Republican attempt to kill the ACA only failed because three Republican senators broke ranks — two of them women.

The incoming House Democratic majority, more female than ever, will undoubtedly attempt to shore up Obamacare and pursue other avenues to bring America into the 21st century on health care. If the past is a guide, Republicans will do nothing but obstruct. They would be wise to rethink that strategy. America's women will be watching.

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