Governor Gretchen Whitmer Says Bigotry is Bad for Business
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was catapulted into the national limelight in the wake of massive tragedy. Detroit death tolls during the Coronavirus pandemic were unrivaled when then-President Donald Trump called her “that woman from Michigan”. It was a rare make-or-break moment in a politician’s career, and Whitmer delivered by stepping up to the helm and using her newfound fame to push for material support from the federal government. In the weeks following, ventilators, surgical masks and protective gloves were delivered en masse to the state.
Nearly two years on, and one successful reelection bid later, Gov. Whitmer has not slowed down in her efforts to address endemic Michigan issues and larger national conversations through large-scale policy overhaul. One of her next big targets has been abortion access, which is expected to play a pivotal role in debates and getting voters to the polls in 2024.
She arrived at the University of Chicago’s International House to a crowded hall on Oct. 16, 2023, for a conversation with former Oregon Governor Kate Brown on leadership through crisis, particularly as a woman, ultimately asserting that when it comes to abortion access rights, “bigotry is bad for business”.
The governor’s journey with abortion access began in the Michigan state legislature, where she spent fifteen years serving first as a representative and later as a state senator. The controversial Abortion Insurance Opt-Out Act of 2013, championed by Right to Life and advanced by Republican lawmakers, received approval without the signature of then-Governor Rick Snyder. This legislation restricted the situations in which primary insurance plans could include abortion coverage, permitting such coverage only in cases where it is essential to save the life of the woman. At around the same time, discussions were being held about allowing Michigan women to pre-purchase abortion vouchers. Whitmer commented on the nature of these legislature discussions, which did not ultimately come to fruition, saying, “They never held a single hearing to hear women, they never held a single hearing to hear from medical providers, and I was trying to put a human story to who was going to be impacted.”
In the past five years, several states began passing laws that effectively reversed the decision set forth in Roe v. Wade by placing more stringent restrictions on the scenarios in which abortion access was legal. One such law was Mississippi’s 2018 Gestational Age Act, which banned abortions after 15 weeks and was specifically geared at asking the United States Supreme Court to take a second look at Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two monumental cases that set up the framework for national policy on abortion. Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in the Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, subsequently led to the overturn of the longstanding standard set by Roe, placing the right to abortion firmly back in the hands of the individual state legislatures. Abortion in the post-Roe world continues to be legal in Michigan with some restrictions–it is banned after fetal viability at 24-26 weeks and patients must wait 24 hours after counseling to receive the procedure.
Governor Whitmer has had to carefully maneuver the challenges posed by a slim Democratic majority in the state senate. Her tenure as the state's leader has been marked by a pragmatic approach that prioritizes bipartisanship to achieve common goals. In a climate where political polarization often hinders progress, Whitmer has emerged as a bridge builder in a swing state, actively engaging with legislators from both sides of the aisle to find areas of agreement. This has set her up as a strong potential contender for the 2028 presidential election (the governor has already thrown her support behind sitting President Biden for 2024), which has called her actions in women's health into even greater scrutiny. As the U.S. approaches a period in which conversations over abortion access and women’s healthcare are expected to take center stage, Whitmer’s claim that bigotry is bad for business warrants some inspection.
Access to abortion has had a storied relationship with women’s financial health, from their education levels to their credit scores and ability to live above the poverty line. It is a major force that has contributed to improving women’s labor force participation–women’s national labor force participation rates went from around 40 percent before Roe was passed in 1973 to nearly 60 percent at pre-pandemic levels. While this was certainly not the only contributing factor to that change, it was part of a significant cultural shift in how women were perceived and treated in the workplace. When they were given the opportunity to defer unplanned pregnancies and take up jobs without concerns about rising costs of childcare or tasks of domestic labor, women were able to develop professionally in a manner that has had spillover effects in the U.S. economy.
According to the Center for American Progress, women’s labor contributed 7.6 trillion USD to the nation’s GDP in 2017 out of a total of $19.5 trillion USD. A more recent report audited by Reuters has argued that the U.S. economy could get a $1 trillion boost over the next 10 years if female labor market participation grew to the levels seen in other developed economies. Given that the women’s labor force has shrunk in size since the onset of the pandemic disrupted schooling and heavily impacted female-dominated workplaces in the service industry, it is important to refocus economic attention on women’s ability to reenter the workforce. Beyond the macroeconomics, this has had a tremendous impact not only on family units, which have greater disposable income, but also on women’s financial independence.
In the 46 states that reported data to the CDC in 2020, the majority of women who had abortions (57%) were in their 20s, while 31% were in their 30s. Teenagers accounted for 8%, while women in their 40s accounted for 4% of those who had abortions. Women in their twenties and thirties are then the group left most vulnerable by the Dobbs decision, being faced with pregnancies they are unprepared for at a time when they are also pursuing higher education and at the most critical points in their careers. The Brookings Institute has cited concerns that impacts on higher education will include reduced college enrollment, particularly for Black women, reductions in out-of-state enrollment in states with strict anti-abortion policies, and significant gaps in training in medical schools. OB-GYN residency programs are required to offer access to training in induced abortion, although students with moral or religious objections are permitted to opt out. This requirement has been enforced by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education since 1996, and programs unable to meet this standard risk their accreditation status. With over 40% of OB-GYN residents in programs in states with restrictive abortion laws, this could severely impact the amount of qualified professionals in women’s health.
The U.S. is fast approaching a major national election in an increasingly polarized environment as abortion access once again becomes a crucial legislative subject. Whitmer argues that it would do well to remember that family planning is as much an economic concern as a social one. Sitting in the packed audience hall at the University of Chicago, Whitmer concluded,“If you don’t think abortion is an economic issue, you probably don’t have a uterus.”
This image featured in this article is available for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 (CC BY-ND 4.) International license. No changes were made to this image, which can be found here, and photo credit may be attributed to the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan.
