Michelle Obama to Men: ‘This Is Their Issue, Too’
The former first lady talks women’s health in her latest podcast episode.
There were echoes of the fiery Michelle Obama from the 2024 presidential campaign this week in her latest podcast episode where, like last year, she continued her plea to men to make women’s health a priority not just a choice about reproductive health.
The conversation took place Wednesday on IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson where the siblings hosted longtime friend Dr. Sharon Malone, an OB-GYN with 30 years in the field and the author of Grown Woman Talk.
Obama challenged the notion that women’s health boils down to the question of reproductive choice, a hotly contested election issue where former Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris supported women making their own choices when it comes to reproductive health.
“As I attempted to make the argument on the campaign trail this past election was that there is so much more at stake,” Obama said, adding that a narrow outlook about women’s health still affects the way many male lawmakers, male politicians and male religious leaders think about the issue of choice. “As if it is just about the fetus, the baby. Women’s reproductive health is about our life.”
The former first lady drew a connection between childbirth and healthy women.
“You only produce life if the ‘machine’ that’s producing it—if you want to whittle it down to a machine—if the machine is functioning in a healthy, streamlined kind of way,” she said. “But there’s no discussion or apparent connection between the two.”
In a post Roe v. Wade world, the Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned the landmark 1973 decision legalizing a woman’s right for abortion by leaving it to individual states to legislate. Since then, 12 states have banned abortions and several others have varying laws about gestational limits, according to KFF. In 11 of the 12 states banning abortion, criminal penalties can be placed on clinicians who violate the bans. In Alabama, for example, violation of the ban constitutes a Class A felony and carries a maximum sentence of 99 years, the same category as murder. Over the past three years, some women have been forced to travel outside of their home states for treatment. To date, no clinicians have been convicted or jailed since the ruling, according to KFF.
The effect of that legislation, Malone said, has a downstream impact that includes fewer people choosing to practice obstetrics and gynecology and practitioners leaving states where laws are most restrictive.
“What happens when you don’t have doctors in those states?” Malone asked, explaining that it not only sets women back, but it sets up a situation for women having no access to reproductive healthcare. “That’s a problem.”
And as the conversation turned to the state of vaccines in the United States, Obama once again spoke directly to men on the issue of reproductive health:
“I implore men in the world who have women that they say they care about, daughters that they are raising, that this is their issue, too,” she said. “I mean for men to sit on their hands over this issue and trade out women’s health for a tax break … is a sad statement about that man’s level of value of the women in their lives.”
“I implore men in the world who have women that they say they care about, daughters that they are raising, that this is their issue, too,” she said. “I mean for men to sit on their hands over this issue and trade out women’s health for a tax break … is a sad statement about that man’s level of value of the women in their lives.”
—former First Lady Michelle Obama
Unlike the urgent message from the 2024 campaign trail where the former first lady told voters to “do something,” this time Malone leveled with the audience: “No one’s coming to save you.”
The president, the governor and the state legislator are not, she added. But, they will, she said with the power of their vote. The issue of women’s health, including reproductive health, will affect all women regardless of political affiliation, Malone noted.
“There are a lot of men who have big chairs at their tables. There are a lot of women who vote the way their man is going to vote,” Obama said. “It happened in this election.”
Listen to the full podcast here.
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