Ten years ago, as Michigan’s Republican-led Legislature was on the verge of passing one of the nation’s most restrictive anti-abortion laws at the time, a 42-year-old state senator from East Lansing took to the Senate floor to speak out against what she knew was about to happen.
Minutes into her speech, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer tossed aside her prepared remarks and revealed for the first time publicly that she had been raped while attending college. Had she 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 declare when buying health insurance whether they expected to receive an abortion, passed anyway. But Whitmer, now in her second term as Michigan’s governor after winning reelection by nearly 11 percentage points in 2022, this week removed the requirement from state law with the stroke of a pen after Michigan’s Democratic-controlled Legislature sent her a bill tossing it aside.
“It’s kind of a stunning full-circle moment where it does reinforce that these fights are worth having and they’re winnable, even if sometimes it takes a little longer than it should,” Whitmer said Monday in an interview with The Associated Press.
Big Gretch
Gretch Did
Big Gretch for President. I’ve been to her home a few times and she’s always taken the time to engage in conversation as a down to earth person.
She’s always been a wonderful conversationalist, person, and is a politician that genuinely cares about making peoples’ lives better.
She has my vote when she decides to run.
This is good to hear. I’ve heard she’s very much a politician first, actual person second from people who knew her, but that’s all secondhand.