Michigan's governor decries a national wave of state abortion restrictions as "cruel, poorly informed laws" that are "a distraction from all the other really important things we need to be tackling."
"This is a safe medical procedure that has saved women’s lives — that has protected their reproductive ability in the future — that is now under attack here in Michigan," Gretchen Whitmer said Monday on MSNBC (video below).
"The good news is we have three pro-choice Democratic women at the top of state office here in Michigan right now and we are all absolutely committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose."
She was referring to Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
The governor also notes that "so many of these decisions are made in a vacuum with a bunch of men sitting around a table and deciding what a woman's rights should be, what our access to health care should be — trying to control women by controlling our bodies."
She vows to veto bills banning the dilation and evacuation abortion procedure that the Senate and House, both led by Republicans, passed last week..
Six years ago as a state senator, she revealed why the issue is a particularly personal one for her. While speaking against a Republican-backed effort to require separate health insurance to cover abortion, Whitmer said she had been raped more than 20 years earlier, a memory that still haunts. She voiced relkief that no pregnancy resulted.
At the beginning of this week's interview, as Susan J. Demas notes at Michigan Advance, the first-term governor told MSNBC host Hallie Jackson: "Thank you for highlighting this issue. It's really important."
