Former US first lady Michelle Obama speaks during a campaign event for Democratic presidential nominee US Vice President Kamala Harris at Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Kalamazoo: Michelle Obama on Saturday issued an impassioned plea to American voters -- and, in particular, American men -- anchored in a searing and intimate depiction of women's bodies and reproductive health, and what she described as the life-or-death stakes of returning former President Donald Trump to power.
In her first appearance on the campaign trail during this election, the former first lady, long reluctant to engage in the political arena, described the far-reaching consequences of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, in the concrete terms of personal tragedy.
"If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood, or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctors aren't sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it's not too late," Obama said. "You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something."
And although she acknowledged the anger that many Americans feel about the "slow pace of change" in the country, she warned: "If we don't get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage."
Obama's words -- at a rally in Michigan where she introduced Vice President Kamala Harris -- amounted to an extraordinary centering of women's bodies and their private experiences in a US presidential election. She discussed menstrual cramps and hot flashes, describing the shame and uncertainty girls and women feel about their bodies. She told women they should demand to be treated as more than "baby-making vessels."
And she castigated the media and many voters for holding Harris to a higher standard than her opponent, for "choosing to ignore Donald Trump's gross incompetence, while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn."
"We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs," Obama said. "But for Trump, we expect nothing at all, no understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals."
The crowd roared in approval.
But it was her remarks on women's health that most captivated the audience. Obama told her audience that Trump would further damage women's health care, while Harris has vowed to enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law.
Those protections, Obama said, went far beyond the right to an abortion, extending to the private and vital relationships that women and girls have with their doctors.
Obama's message was, in part, a counterpoint to the argument that her husband, former President Barack Obama, made to Black men earlier this month, when he sternly suggested that sexism might be preventing them from voting for a woman. Perhaps, Michelle Obama seemed to say, men could instead be persuaded to vote for the women in their lives.
"I am asking you, from the very core of my being: Please, take our lives seriously," she said.
With the election 10 days away, Harris is facing an electorate deeply divided by gender. A majority of women support her. A majority of men are backing Trump. Her joint appearance with Obama in Michigan seemed designed both to energize her female supporters and to jolt men into understanding what she believes is at risk.
Polls in the state, which she almost certainly must win to capture the White House, show a race that is essentially tied, as in the other battleground states and the nation at large. President Joe Biden won Michigan in 2020 with strong support from its Black voters, as well as Arab Americans and Muslims. But Harris is not polling as well with Black voters, especially men, and many Arab Americans and Muslims say they will not vote for her because of the Biden administration's support for Israel in the war in the Gaza Strip. (At one point Saturday, Harris was interrupted by a man in the crowd shouting, "No more Gaza war.")
The Harris campaign has tried to draw the backing of other voting blocs, particularly moderate suburban women who have expressed dissatisfaction with Trump. Kalamazoo County, where she and Obama spoke Saturday, is a predominantly white slice of southwestern Michigan, home to many voters who chose former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley over Trump in the state's Republican primary.
On Saturday, speaking after Obama, Harris made what has become her standard political pitch in reaching across the aisle to women concerned about abortion rights and their safety.
"We're seeing women scrambling across state lines to get the care they need," Harris said. "Do you think Donald Trump is thinking about the consequences for the millions of women who will be living in medical deserts?"
Obama had made those stakes plain, in terms that are almost never raised in the spotlight of a national campaign.
"I want the men in the arena to bear with me on this, because there's more at stake than just protecting a woman's choice to give birth," she said. "Sadly, we as women and girls have not been socialized to talk openly about our reproductive health. We've been taught instead to feel shame and to hide how our bodies work."
Young girls might not know what to expect from puberty. Women "my age," she noted, don't know what to expect from menopause. Now, they face the erosion of their health care options, she said, in the wake of Dobbs, the Supreme Court's ruling on abortion.
"Look, a woman's body is complicated business, y'all," Obama said to laughter. As she spoke, there were nods of agreement and incantations of "Yes" from around the room.
"And in those terrifying moments when something goes wrong -- which will happen at some point to the vast majority of women in this country -- let me tell you, it feels like the floor falls out from under us," she said. "In those moments, all we have to rely on is our medical system, in those dark moments, all we have to rely on is our faith in a higher power and the experience of doctors to get us the care we need in a timely manner."
"And look, I don't expect any man to fully grasp how vulnerable this makes us feel, to understand the complexities of our reproductive health experiences," she said.
Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August but has not campaigned for Harris since. She has long expressed her dislike of the campaign trail, including Saturday, when she said,"Y'all know I hate politics."
But she remains one of the most popular and unifying figures in the Democratic Party.
In many ways, her joint appearance with Harris represented exactly the kind of generational and cultural change that the vice president has sought to emphasize in her breakneck campaign to defeat Trump.
After Harris finished speaking, Obama strode back onstage. As the crowd watched, the nation's first Black first lady tightly embraced its first Black vice president.