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

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 U.S. 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 lawmakers. But Democrats have argued on the campaign trail that a federal ban would overrule those constitutional provisions.