Whitmer's fight for abortion rights helped turn Michigan blue. She's eyeing national impact now

LANSING, MI — Ten years ago, as Michigan's Republican-led Legislature was about to pass one of the nation's most restrictive anti-abortion bills at the time, a 42-year-old senator from East Lansing entered the Senate to speak out against what she knew was going to happen.

Minutes after her speech, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer put aside her prepared remarks and publicly revealed for the first time that she had been raped while in college. If she had become pregnant, Whitmer said, she would not have been able to afford an abortion under the proposed law.

The bill, which Whitmer had derisively called “rape insurance” because it required women to indicate whether they expected an abortion when purchasing health insurance, was nevertheless passed. But Whitmer, now in her second term as Michigan governor after being re-elected in 2022 by nearly 11 percentage points, this week with the stroke of a pen, removed the requirement from state law after the Democratic-controlled Michigan Legislature sent her a bill to to push it aside.

“It's a stunning full-circle moment, reinforcing that these fights are worth it and that they are winnable, even if sometimes it takes a little longer than it should,” Whitmer said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.

Whitmer recalled the hundreds of phone calls and emails she received after her 2013 speech as a turning point for her, the moment she realized how many people care about protecting a woman's right to choose whether to have an abortion undergo. It's a lesson she hopes to draw across the country as one of the country's leading abortion rights advocates during what could prove to be a crucial election year for the issue in 2024.

“The voters are speaking loud and clear,” she said. “And so I think this is an important, critical issue for a lot of people right now, in this country.”

Abortion rights came to the political forefront after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that had long preserved them as a constitutional right. The Court gave states the power to decide for themselves whether abortion should be legal.

Conservative states across the country moved quickly to enact abortion bans in various forms, leading to a wave of legal battles in places like Texas, where a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal condition was forced to leave the state this week leaving to obtain an abortion. . Some Republicans, including several contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, have also called for a national abortion ban.

The political fallout at the ballot box has largely gone in the opposite direction. Democrats did better than expected in last year's midterm elections. They limited losses in the House of Representatives and maintained a narrow majority in the Senate. This year too, the defense of abortion rights in several states worked in favor of the Democrats. When constitutional questions about abortion rights appeared on the ballot, even voters in Republican states from Kansas to Ohio rejected Republican Party-backed efforts to curb these rights.

Whitmer says Democrats won in Michigan by unapologetically addressing the issue. Her party controls all levels of state government for the first time in four decades after flipping both chambers of the Legislature last November.

That success was fueled by a citizen-led ballot initiative to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. Whitmer and other Michigan Democrats emphasized their support for the initiative in their 2022 election campaigns.

President Joe Biden's reelection campaign sees defending abortion rights as a winning issue for Democrats in 2024. They are quick to note former President Donald Trump's boast that his appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices prompted the reversal of the court.

Biden himself has been less outspoken on the issue than other members of his party, and at times appears personally conflicted.

'I happen to be a practicing Catholic. “I'm not really in favor of abortion,” he said at a fundraiser in June. “But guess what? Roe v. Wade gets it right.”

Biden's hesitation comes as his re-election campaign faces vulnerabilities. Michigan was a crucial part of the so-called blue wall of states including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that returned Biden to the Democratic column and helped him win the White House in 2020.

However, the president's support in the state has wavered since the 2020 election, and a CNN poll released Monday found only 35% of respondents approved of his job.

Michigan is also home to one of the largest Arab-American and Muslim communities in the country, and many of their leaders have said that its pro-Israel stance on the war that began with an Oct. 7 Hamas attack could be jeopardizing Michigan's chances of winning again.

Whitmer, who co-chairs Biden's re-election campaign and is often mentioned as a future presidential candidate herself, dodged questions Monday about his chances in Michigan, insisting she would only “focus on reproductive rights” today.

Whitmer also said she understands that talking about abortion is “not comfortable for everyone.” But she said the chances of Republicans pushing for a federal ban on abortion should be taken seriously.

For her, that is reason enough to talk about abortion rights early, often and unequivocally.

“The prospect of a national abortion ban is real,” she said. Using different words to talk about reproductive rights or being overly cautious about the issue, she said, “dilutes the importance of the moment.”

In June, Whitmer launched a federal PAC “Fight Like Hell” to raise money for Democratic candidates who are “unapologetic in their fight for working people and their basic freedoms” ahead of the 2024 elections. The PAC will endorse candidates for support Congress and other offices, but will also provide financial support for Biden's re-election bid.

Since gaining full legislative control, Michigan Democrats have overturned the 1931 abortion ban, banned Michigan companies from firing or retaliating against employees who had abortions, and lifted regulations on abortion clinics.

For Whitmer, those successes help justify her decision a decade ago to discuss abortion in such personal terms.

“I think of my daughters, who I was so worried about when they learned their mother had been raped when they were 10 and 11 years old,” Whitmer said. “And now they're 20 and 21, and I know they're proud to see that I've stayed in this fight and that I'm trying to make life better for other women.”