Perhaps the most important thing about her right now, though, is her fierce defense of abortion rights and her comfort talking about the subject at a time when it’s moved to the molten center of American politics. When the Supreme Court decision scrapping Roe, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, came down in June 2022, Michigan still had a 1931 abortion prohibition on the books. Whitmer led the way in making sure it never went back into effect, campaigning hard for a 2022 ballot measure making abortion a state constitutional right. Jessica Mackler, interim president of Emily’s List, said that at a moment when women in Michigan, as well as much of America, didn’t know if they were about to lose their bodily autonomy, and with it the power to shape their own lives, “Gretchen Whitmer was the leader who was standing there saying, ‘I’m going to fight like hell and protect these rights for you.’”
Whitmer first shot to national prominence in 2013, when, as minority leader in the Michigan Senate, she spoke against a bill requiring women to purchase a separate rider if they wanted abortion covered by their health insurance. Democrats called the bill “rape insurance,” and in denouncing it on the Senate floor, Whitmer revealed that she’d been raped in college. “I can’t imagine going through what I went through and then having to consider what to do about an unwanted pregnancy from an attacker,” she said, adding, “I think you need to see the face of the women you are impacting by this vote today.” The bill passed anyway, though 10 years later, as governor, Whitmer would sign its repeal.
When Roe v. Wade was overturned, as The Washington Post’s Ruby Cramer reported, Whitmer immediately rushed to tell her daughters, Sherry and Sydney, treating the ruling as a family crisis as well as a political one. “The Whitmer family has been in Michigan for five generations,” wrote Cramer. But, Cramer continued, without the right to control their reproductive destinies — and, in the case of Whitmer’s eldest, who is gay, to marry — “they will probably settle their lives elsewhere.”
That year, running for re-election in tandem with the campaign for a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights, Whitmer held round tables on the subject all over the state. The issue, she said, helped her build a coalition that included moderate Republican women. In our interview, she described the sort of things they told her: “I’ve never voted for a Democrat. I never thought I’d vote for you. But I’m out knocking doors for you. Because you have to win because you’re the only one fighting for this, for this freedom for me and my girls.” Now Whitmer must convince those women, as well as disaffected progressives, that Biden has to win for the same reason.
At first glance, this shouldn’t be hard. Abortion, as we’ve seen in the two years since the Supreme Court scrapped Roe v. Wade, is a powerful electoral motivator. This is especially true when it comes to state ballot measures, which let voters separate their support for reproductive autonomy from their party affiliation; abortion rights have proven popular even in very Republican states. But Democrats have also repeatedly outperformed expectations in congressional elections since Dobbs. Just last month, in the race to fill George Santos’s old seat on Long Island, the Democrat Tom Suozzi won by almost eight points, more than polling had predicted. There were several issues at play in that contest, but abortion was a significant one.
