In her first stop on the 2024 campaign trail, former first lady Michelle Obama delivered an urgent message to men, arguing that the election could have life-or-death consequences for the women they love.
“I ask all of you from the core of my being to take our lives seriously,” she said at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The former first lady praised Harris’ credentials and urged attendance and involvement in her speech. But she spent a lot of time, charged with emotion, arguing that there would be dire consequences for the future of women’s health if former President Donald Trump, who campaigned in Michigan and Pennsylvania on Saturday, were re-elected.
“To the men who love us, let me try to paint a picture of what it will feel like if America, the richest country in the world, continues to withdraw basic health care from its women and how this will affect every woman in your life. Obama said.
Obama argued that a woman affected by the policy “is in legal jeopardy if she needs a pill from out of state or overseas, or if she has to travel across state lines because the local clinic is closed.”
‘Your daughter may be too scared to call the doctor if she is bleeding during an unexpected pregnancy. Your niece may be the one having a miscarriage in her bathtub after the hospital turns her away,” she continued.
“And this won’t just affect women; it will affect you and your sons,” she said, suggesting that both men and women would suffer from “the devastating effects of teen pregnancy.”
Going beyond abortion, Obama suggested that women’s increasingly limited access to forms of health care could also have serious consequences for miscarriage care, cancer screenings and access to medical professionals.
“Your wife or mother could be the ones at greater risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they do not have access to regular gynecological care,” she said.
“And then there’s the tragic but very real possibility that, in the worst-case scenario, you might be the one holding flowers at the funeral,” she later added. “Maybe you’re the one who has to raise your children alone.”
Her speech comes as polls show a large gender gap in US support for Harris and Trump. An NBC News poll from October found that women supported Harris by a 14-point margin, while men supported Trump by a 16-point margin. Polls from several major media also show that Harris and Trump are involved in an extremely tight race.
Obama also addressed voters who were considering not voting or voting for Trump or a third-party candidate in protest, arguing that “we as women will inflict collateral damage on your anger.”
“As men, are you willing to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them that you supported this attack on our security?” she asked.
Harris, speaking after Obama, echoed similar sentiments, arguing that men saw the women they loved “being endangered because their rights had been taken away.” Before speaking in Michigan on Saturday, Harris held an event in Texas on Friday, using the red state setting to rally supporters against what she called a Trump-induced “health care crisis.”
“The men of America don’t want this. Women have died because of these bans,” Harris said Saturday in Michigan. “How can anyone say he wanted this? And you’ve heard me say, I believe Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the consequences if he ever becomes president again are brutally serious, brutally serious.”
When asked for comment, Trump campaigner Karoline Leavitt said Trump “has long been consistent in supporting states’ rights to make decisions about abortion.” She emphasized that he would not sign a federal ban on abortion and said Trump “also supports universal access to contraception and IVF.”
Trump’s position on reproductive rights has evolved over the years. While he at one point supported abortion rights, he is now being credited for his role in overturning Roe v. Wade after appointing three justices to the Supreme Court who voted with the majority. Trump says he supports the right of states to decide the legality of abortion procedures within their own borders, and has said he would not sign a federal ban.
While Obama highlighted the potential dangers to women, Trump at his rallies on Saturday evoked dark images of crime, criticized Beyoncé’s campaign with Harris and touted his foreign policy experience, claiming Harris “wants war” ‘.
“She would love a draft. All she wants is war. The reason I can’t get along with her is because she wanted to invade every damn country she looked at,” Trump said in Novi, Michigan, without evidence.
Trump also convened in State College, Pennsylvania, and his speeches focused on his signature themes. The former president argued that “we are very close to World War III,” portraying migrants as coming from “jails and prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions,” and insulting Harris as a “very incompetent person.”
Meanwhile, in Michigan, Obama claimed that some people “hold Kamala to a higher standard than her opponent.”
“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have clear policies, to never show too much anger and to prove again and again that she belongs,” she said. “But we don’t expect anything from Trump. No understanding of policy, no ability to craft a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morality.”
And she insinuated that Harris could suffer electorally if Americans are not “ready for this moment.”
“It is clear to me that the question is not whether Kamala is ready for this moment, because by every measure she has demonstrated that she is ready for it,” she said. “The real question is: Are we as a country ready for this moment?”
More than 7,000 people attended the rally, according to a Harris campaign official. Most people in the audience stood for Obama’s entire 40-minute speech, often erupting in cheers and punctuating her remarks.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
