Harris, Whitmer, Stabenow discuss abortion rights in Michigan

With less than a week until the Michigan primary election, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Great Lake State Thursday for the latest stop of her nationwide “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour, a series of discussions and speeches concerning life in the wake of 2022’s U.S. Supreme Court decision removing federal abortion protections. The tour and its message are central to the reelection strategy of Biden and the Democratic Party, who have seen voters activated in droves across the country to push back on anti-abortion legislation.

The fight this election, they suggest, is to prevent Republicans from governing and introducing a nationwide ban on abortion.

“Freedom is fundamental to the promise of America. And what we saw over a year ago in the highest court in our land, the United States Supreme Court — the court of Thurgood and RBG — took a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America, from the women of America,” Harris said ahead of a roundtable discussion with leaders in Michigan, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

Michigan is again considered a swing state in 2024, with a slight Democratic edge — but Democrats, and especially abortion rights advocates, codified reproductive rights and abortion access into the Michigan Constitution by way of a citizen ballot initiative in 2022. When the draft majority opinion in the case that would overturn Roe v. Wade, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was leaked to the public in May 2022, Michiganders rose up — 30,000 people reached out to the campaign in one day, crashing the website of progressive nonprofit Michigan Voices.

“We had folks from every corner of the state reaching out to make sure that they could get petitions to sign them,” said Sommer Foster, the executive director of Michigan Voices. She recalled a signing event at a coffee shop, where an 18-year-old was desperate to show their support — but they weren’t registered to vote. “So they took out their phone and registered on the spot to make sure that they could sign the petition,” Foster said. 

Their measure resonated with young people and doctors and mothers, “who were so angry that their kids were going to live in a country where they had fewer rights than they had growing up,” Foster said. It passed with 56% of the vote.

“And then we turn around and realize that all of this can be stripped away with a national abortion ban,” Stabenow said. “Any woman in this process is not trusted at all, and so we have to do it again. That’s why we’re here: we did it, and we have to do it again, and make sure that we do not see our freedoms stripped away in Michigan or any other state.”

A person’s ballot is not an island — who voters select matters, Stabenow said.

Currently, Michigan Democrats own a trifecta in state government — control of the Governor’s office as well as both chambers of the state legislature, though only offices within the Michigan House of Representatives are up for grabs this year. 

As is Harris’s job, as is the job of her boss, President Joe Biden.

“This is an issue that is about fundamental freedoms and liberty,” Harris said. “One must then ask, well, OK, how did this happen? And I would say, ask who’s to blame, and I’ll answer that question,” she added. In short, her answer is former President Donald Trump, who nominated three conservative Supreme Court justices, all of whom turned voted to overturn federal protections on abortion.

Trump, she added, has repeatedly gone on record taking credit for Roe being overturned — a move, she argued, that has resulted in medical providers being threatened with, or sentenced to, jail time; for putting pregnant parents’ lives at risk; to ensure that America’s young women have fewer rights than their parents and grandparents.

“Let’s understand the connection between all of these issues and the responsibility and the role that we each have to protect these fundamental freedoms, and the people of America to be able to make decisions about their own lives and the future of their family.””