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Michelle Obama makes women’s health care appeal to men at Michigan rally

Harry October 27, 2024

Kalamazoo — Former first lady Michelle Obama urged men not to sit out the election or mark a “protest vote” against Vice President Kamala Harris at the ballot box, warning them that the possibility of further limits on reproductive health would impact them as much as their wives and daughters.

Obama spent a good portion of her roughly 40-minute address at the Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo describing the effect of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade has had in states with strict abortion regulations and warned further disruption to reproductive rights under a second Trump presidency.

She weighed her message against the possibility that male voters may choose former President Donald Trump, a third-party candidate or not vote at all in the presidential race, and urged them not to be “indifferent to our plight.”

“Your rage does not exist in a vacuum,” Obama said. “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage.”

Before arriving at the Kalamazoo rally, Harris stopped at a physician’s office in nearby Portage to meet with healthcare providers and medical students to discuss threats to reproductive rights.

Michigan voters in 2022 approved a constitutional amendment that enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution and largely removed decision making on abortion from the hands of state legislators. But Democrats have argued on the campaign trail that a federal ban would overrule those constitutional provisions.

The former first lady, making her first speech on the campaign trail this fall, warned men of the implications of a nation with a patchwork of state laws governing abortion and pregnancies and complications it might cause for the women in their lives.

“Your niece could be the one miscarrying in her bathtub after the hospital turned her away,” Obama said. “And this will not just affect women. It will affect you and your sons.”

For young couples expecting a child, there are a myriad of unforeseen complications that can occur during a pregnancy, Obama said, underscoring the need for a woman and her doctor to be able to make a decision about whether to terminate a pregnancy.

“If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her (blood) pressure dropping as she loses more and and more blood or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctor aren’t sure if they can act “You will be the one praying that it’s not too late,” Obama said.

“You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something,” she added.

Obama’s remarks, which proceeded a speech by Harris, were her first since the Democratic National Convention in August and come a few days after her husband, former President Barack Obama, campaigned for Harris in Detroit.

She spoke to a full crowd Saturday evening at Wings Event Center, an ice arena that usually hosts the K-Wings minor league hockey team. The arena holds between 5,000 and 6,000 people; an overflow rink was also used for a few hundred other supporters who could not fit inside the arena.

Obama and Harris’ remarks come on the first day of nine days of early voting in Michigan. They were preceded by Democratic Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist and US Sen. Gary Peters, who encouraged early voting at the rally held in southwest Michigan.

“Y’all, Michigan is going to be the state that decides this election,” Gilchrist told the crowd.

The visit a week and a half ahead of Election Day comes amid an onslaught of candidate visits to the swing state. Harris’ Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, held a rally earlier Saturday afternoon in Novi, hours after rallying supporters late Friday night in Traverse City.

More: As Michigan Dems run on abortion rights, GOP shifts stance to diffuse attacks

The Trump campaign panned the visit from Harris and Obama.

“It doesn’t matter who Kamala Harris brings to her rallies to distract from the fact that you’re at a Kamala Harris rally,” said Victoria LaCivita, a spokesperson for Trump’s Michigan campaign, in a statement. “The message is still the same. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for higher inflation, open borders, chaos and bloodshed on the world stage, and a fading American Dream.”

A couple hours ahead of Harris’ arrival, the Wings Event Center arena, which has a capacity of between 5,000 and 6,000, was nearly fully. Additional attendees were being directed to overflow areas.

Sheri Millard, of Portage, snagged a front row seat for the event Saturday. She said she was supporting the vice president out of concern for the direction of the country and democracy, repeating a phrase spoken often by Harris at her rallies: “We can’t go back.”

“I just think way too many people don’t believe it; they think he’s just blowing smoke,” Millard said.

“I’m afraid if he gets elected again, this country will never be the same again. He’s done enough damage in four years already.”

More: Fact-checking some of Michigan’s most misleading TV election ad claims

Brooklyn Pitchford cast her first vote for president via absentee ballot last week. On Saturday, the 21-year-old Kalamazoo resident eagerly awaited the vice president and former first lady’s arrival in her hometown.

Pitchford said she voted for Harris because she believes the California Democrat will work to protect her rights, including her reproductive rights.

“She understands it’s a woman’s choice and no man should have a dictate on the right to do what she wants with her body,” Pitchford said of abortion.

Harris is expected to be back in Michigan on Monday, making stops at three different locations, including Ann Arbor. Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is scheduled to campaign in Saginaw Township on Tuesday, the Trump campaign said Saturday.

Both campaigns are using campaign rallies this weekend to encourage voters to cast ballots early or return absentee ballots to their local clerks. As of Friday, about 1.46 million absentee ballots had been returned to clerks, a return rate of 63% of the 2.3 million absentee ballots sent to Michigan voters, according to the Secretary of State’s office.

“We cannot leave anything on the field. The future of this country is in our hands as the whole country watches Michigan,” said Peters, D-Bloomfield Township.

More: Michigan election sites see brisk traffic on first statewide day for early voting

Kalamazoo County has gone blue in the last two presidential elections.

In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Trump in Kalamazoo County by roughly 13 percentage points, 53%-40%. In 2020, President Joe Biden beat Trump in the county by 18 percentage points, 58%-40%.

Biden went on to win Michigan by roughly 154,000 votes, or nearly 3 percentage points.

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