Attendees listen to Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, talk during a campaign event for U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) in Grand Rapids on June 20, 2024. | Lucy Valeski
Cheers, woos, boos and hisses erupted Thursday from a crowd of U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) supporters as she joined three leaders from national organizations in Grand Rapids to talk about an issue prominently on the minds of Democratic leaders in the 2024 election: reproductive rights.
“We were not used to talking about it, but they came for us,” Slotkin said. “They came for our rights. They came for our daughters and our granddaughters.”
Slotkin is running for a U.S. Senate seat left wide open with the upcoming retirement of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing). Her campaign event underscored the weight Democrats are putting behind both Michigan’s Senate race and reproductive rights.
During the event, U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-Grand Rapids) said Michigan’s Senate race was the most important in the country because it is a swing state without an incumbent lawmaker running.
“Elissa chose to come here because she knows that you cannot win statewide without winning here in West Michigan,” Scholten said. “We have seen a sea change here in West Michigan when it comes to the issue of reproductive rights.”
U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin speaks to a crowd of supporters at a campaign event for her bid for the U.S. Senate in Grand Rapids on June 20, 2024. | Lucy Valeski
Slotkin is facing actor and candidate Hill Harper in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary. Former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, businessman Sandy Pensler and Dr. Sherry O’Donnell are competing for the GOP nomination.
Slotkin took the opportunity to stress her record of supporting reproductive rights in Congress and criticize her GOP colleagues for “extreme” restrictions on abortion and other reproductive health care. She also said Republican lawmakers seemed uneducated on reproductive health care, saying they did not understand “seventh-grade health.”
“Do you understand contraception or do you understand how a woman gets pregnant?” Slotkin said.
Harper, the only other Democratic candidate for the Senate, also supports federal abortion rights for women, in addition to other protections for reproductive health care, spokesperson Greg Bowens told the Advance. While speakers criticized GOP lawmakers throughout the Slotkin event, Harper, who Slotkin will have to beat in August to even compete with a Republican candidate, was not mentioned.
“We need to pass women’s reproductive freedom, women’s reproductive rights. It has to get codified federally,” Harper said in a May interview with CBS News Detroit.
Slotkin’s campaign event featured president of Planned Parenthood Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Reproductive Freedom for All Mini Timmaraju and EMILYs List President Jessica Mackler.
All three organizations endorsed Slotkin’s campaign for Senate.
“We must win this November and secure federal pro-choice majorities driven by Democratic pro-choice women like Elissa Slotkin,” Mackler said. “Then we can beat back these attacks, but we can also deliver true reproductive freedom for women across America.”
The campaign event comes just ahead of the two year anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization U.S. Supreme Court decision, which repealed Roe v. Wade and sent the issue back to the states to make abortion policy.
While Michigan voters approved to enshrine the rights of people to obtain an abortion in 2022, speakers said reproductive rights were still on the ballot. Timmaraju said having advocates for reproductive rights in Congress is important to passing bills that protect rights like medication abortion, birth control, IVF and fertility treatments.
“We do that, folks, we get to lock in a federal right to abortion in all 50 states and take back this country and our freedoms,” Timmaraju said.
It’s also important to support people who can get pregnant in other states, Slotkin said, so reproductive rights should be a salient issue in Michigan going into the 2024 election. She also pointed out that people from Indiana, and formerly Ohio, overwhelmed clinics in Michigan as they traveled over the border to receive health care.
“Even if we were good to go and we had protections against federal legislation, can we agree that we’re not going to leave our sisters in Indiana behind and all the other states,” Slotkin said. “… Don’t for one minute believe that it’s OK to leave some women behind.”
Limiting reproductive rights does not stop at banning abortion, Slotkin said. Mackler slammed U.S. Senate GOP frontrunner Rogers, who had sponsored bills that could restrict IV because they defined life as the moment of fertilization. Earlier this month, all but two GOP senators voted against protecting IVF and a week before, blocked a bill that would protect access to contraception.
Slotkin said not protecting IVF was hypocritical because conservative politicians say they are pro-family, and the procedure gives people greater opportunities to have children.
While Slotkin said people should consider reproductive rights going into this election, there is no guarantee they actually will. A recent poll from KFF, a nonprofit health research organization, found reproductive rights may not be a motivator to vote for Michigan women this year.
But Slotkin said this issue matters to even casual Michigan voters because there are people who are afraid of seeing other rights stripped away.
“Make no mistake, sexual reproductive freedom, sexual reproductive health care is under attack by politicians, by judges, by activists,” McGill Johnson said. “They are playing for power and control at the expense of our bodies, our lives and our futures.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
The post Slotkin flexes support from national reproductive rights organizations in US Senate bid appeared first on Michigan Advance.