GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — For the group of six Michigan women gathered around a table in Grand Rapids on Thursday, 2024 doesn't just signal a potential change in the presidency. For them, it also signals a potential change to what they see as fundamental rights to reproductive options like contraception.
Their access to healthcare, they believed, was all on the table, as they sat around this table of their own.
"I think that's a piece of the story that doesn't often get told: how important contraception is to the health, just the general day-to-day health of young women and women of all ages," said State Rep. Carol Glanville (D-Walker).
Glanville was referring to women like Mariah Stewart, sitting to her left at the table.
Stewart, a self-described West Michigan activist, shared with the group her story of being diagnosed with premenstrual depression disorder two years ago.
"The experience is different for everyone, but for me, the week leading up to my menstruation cycle, the symptoms of depression are heightened, which can include suicidal thoughts, feeling lonely, not wanting to get out of bed, all of those common signs of depression," Stewart told the group. "And I was prescribed birth control to help with those symptoms, which has completely turned my life around and made me feel so much better not having to deal with those crazy, just flips in emotion, which is a lot for young women and especially teenagers."
These activists and local lawmakers held their discussion just one day after the U.S. Senate rejected advancing a bill, referred to as the Right to Contraception Act, aimed at instituting federal protections for contraception access.
The vote was 51 in favor to 39 opposed, short of the 60 votes needed to push it forward.
All but 2 Republicans who voted in the roll call did so against the bill, with some seeing it as unnecessary, and, according to ABC News, believing it to be too broad.
Back in Michigan, Glanville referenced the vote as part of the discussion.
"Just yesterday, nearly all the Senate Republicans voted to block the Right to Contraception Act, despite the fact that eight in 10 voters, 80% of voters, support protecting access to contraception," Glanville said, likely referring to polling released in February by the group Americans for Contraception also cited by reporting from the New York Times. "This is not representation."
And for some women at the table, fears over contraception access are also tied to the prospect of a return to office for former president and current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
"That's why we need to believe and understand the risk here if Donald Trump gets back into office," Glanville said.
13 ON YOUR SIDE reached out to the Trump campaign Thursday for an interview on the topic. The campaign was able to send a statement from the former president that had also been posted to his Truth Social account in late May.
"I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, or other contraceptives," Trump said in the statement. "This is a Democrat fabricated lie, MISINFORMATION/DISINFORMATION, because they have nothing else to run on except FAILURE, POVERTY, AND DEATH. I DO NOT SUPPORT A BAN ON BIRTH CONTROL, AND NEITHER WILL THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!"
It was a statement first posted after Trump, when asked in a radio interview if he supported any restrictions to contraception, according to reporting from the Associated Press, said he was, quote, "looking at that," and that he would have a policy "very shortly."
Given those comments, women like Stewart remain convinced that, for them, their choice is on the line.
"Our reproductive health care and our reproductive future, our access to health care is all on the table when it comes to this election," Stewart said.
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