EMILYs List Statement on Whitmer Challenger Soldano’s Echo of Todd Akin

For Immediate Release
February 1, 2022

EMILYs List Statement on Whitmer Challenger Soldano’s Echo of Todd Akin

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Laphonza Butler, President of EMILYs List, released the following statement on Republican candidate for Michigan governor Garrett Soldano’s outrageous claim that women impregnated by their rapist should “recognize that God put them in this moment”:

“Garrett Soldano’s defense of forcing rape survivors to carry their attacker’s child is a disgusting, dangerous attack on women’s control over our own bodies and our own lives.  

“A decade ago, Republican candidates making similar statements about rape survivors were roundly condemned and defeated.  Nonetheless, men like Garrett Soldano and his party continue to try to control women in the face of overwhelming public support for the right to choose.  With Roe v. Wade under threat at the Supreme Court, the stakes have never been higher.  When Garrett Soldano tells you the laws his party wants, the stakes have never been more clear.”

EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, has raised over $700 million to elect Democratic pro-choice women candidates. With a grassroots community of over five million members, EMILY's List helps Democratic women win competitive campaigns – across the country and up and down the ballot – by recruiting and training candidates, supporting and helping build strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, running nearly $50 million in independent expenditures in the last cycle alone, and turning out women voters and voters of color to the polls. Since our founding in 1985, we have helped elect the country's first woman as vice president, 159 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 16 governors, and more than 1,300 women to state and local office. More than 40 percent of the candidates EMILYs List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. After the 2016 election, more than 60,000 women reached out to EMILY's List about running for office laying the groundwork for the next decade of candidates for local, state, and national offices. In our effort to elect more women in offices across the country, we have created our Run to Win program, expanded our training program, including a Training Center online, and trained thousands of women.