Michigan Governor Candidate Jocelyn Benson Says Miscarriage Shaped Her Commitment to Reproductive Health Access

As Michigan prepares for its 2026 governor’s race, one candidate is putting a very personal story at the heart of her campaign. Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s sitting Secretary of State and sole female on a widening list of prospective candidates, is telling her miscarriage story for the first time with her new political memoir, The Purposeful Warrior. In this honest self-reflection, she illustrates how a personal heartbreak was the catalyst that set her ablaze to bring more reproductive health access to the state.

Benson’s narrative is started around eight years ago, approximately a year since her son was one year old and around a year when she began campaigning to be Secretary of State. It was a time of confusion in emotions – excitement about having another baby and fear of balancing being a mother and working in the public sector. Her excitement was however short-lived due to despair. She miscarried a day after discovering she was pregnant.

In her book, in the section “Grit and Grace,” Benson explains how the experience both physically and emotionally exhausted her. She recalls visiting a doctor early in the eighth week of pregnancy and being shown three choices: surgery, a drug, or letting the miscarriage happen as nature would normally intend. After overnight, the body had figured it out for itself. As physical pain wore off, though, emotional lingered.

That individual tragedy, Benson said, convinced her that it’s imperative women have access to timely, loving reproductive health care – where they are and whatever their situation. “It made me realize it’s not sufficient to defend reproductive rights on the books,” she said. “We need to make sure the rights are real and accessible to all women.”

She was also made aware of the silence that surrounds miscarriage. Like other women, she fought shame and guilt, and those aren’t conversations that are openly discussed. By sharing what had happened now, she does hope that others will do the same, breaking the stigma and initiating a larger reproductive health conversation.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, these conversations have moved into the mainstream of discussion across the nation. Politicians, women across the political divide, have begun to open up about their experiences of abortion and pregnancy loss. Reproductive health is no longer an esoteric issue; it’s now a mainstream conversation point driving policy, voter enthusiasm, and candidate agendas.

Michigan itself has been a participant in that national conversation. In 2022, voters enacted a ballot referendum codifying access to abortion in the state constitution. That same election saw a sweep of Democratic victories throughout the state. But Benson argues enacting a law is merely the first step. To Benson, actual reproductive freedom means having sufficient clinics, providers, and resources – especially in communities of need.

Benson cites the recent closing of three Planned Parenthood clinics in Michigan, including its sole Upper Peninsula clinic. Those clinics provide not just abortion, but also birth control, STI screening, cancer detection, and treatment for miscarriages. Their closing based on financial instability and decreased federal funding has left behind gaps in care that affect women in the communities in very tangible ways.

In response to this, Benson is proposing innovative solutions. First, she wishes to provide incentives that encourage highly skilled reproductive health care professionals to come into Michigan so that the state may provide high-quality care regardless of where one lives. Second, she proposes funding mobile health units that can take care to remote and rural areas of the state.

She’s also calling for renewed focus on maternal health in general. “We need to address reproductive health as part of a more extensive, more complete strategy for assisting women and families,” she said. That includes better prenatal care, more postpartum assistance, and vigorous support for women experiencing complicated pregnancies or losses like the one she experienced.

Benson’s candidacy for governor will not be straightforward. She is facing a tough Democratic primary from familiar names such as Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson. On the Republican side, she is challenged by U.S. Rep. John James, State Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, and former Attorney General Mike Cox. Shepherding them into the battlefield is Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, an independent candidate on the ballot – a rare gesture of courage in the wake of Democratic loss in the 2024 election that sent the state back into the fold of the GOP.

Benson doesn’t shy away from addressing political rivalries either. In her memoir, she reflects on past tensions with Duggan, particularly during the 2018 gubernatorial primary. She critiques Duggan for not backing Gretchen Whitmer early on and for reportedly encouraging male candidates to enter the race instead. “I’ll never forget the message that sent to women,” she writes, describing how her own campaign was often linked with Whitmer’s simply because they were both women.

That sort of gendered narrative, she contends, is one that women politicians are still fighting. Benson’s campaign, like her memoir, is a challenge to such restrictive narratives. By speaking so openly about the vulnerabilities she experiences about, for example, learning to balance family and political life, or dealing with loss – she’s trying to demonstrate to the public that strong and vulnerable leaders are not mutually exclusive.

As the battle for Michigan’s next governor picks up, this is certain: Benson is centering reproductive health in her campaign, not only as a political concern, but as a profound calling. For her, it begins with a story – one of suffering, of strength, of purpose and she hopes that story will cause others to feel that their voice, that their vote, matters just as much.