Michigan US House candidate Emily Busch talks about past abortion in campaign ads

A candidate running as a Democrat in Michigan's 10th Congressional District is running campaign ads in which she talks about an abortion she had as a young woman.

Emily Busch, who lives outside the 10th District in Oxford, says in the spots, which will run online and be part of a direct mail campaign, that when she was a freshman in college, more than three decades ago, she learned she was pregnant.

"I didn't know a lot at that age but I knew I wasn't ready," she says in the ads. "So I decided to have an abortion."

She goes on to say that "at the end of the day, I had a choice... But across this country, too many women don't have that choice. We are somehow going backwards. Nineteen-year-old girls have less rights than I did 33 years ago."

Busch then attacks U.S. Rep. John James, R-Shelby Township, who currently holds the congressional seat and former Macomb County Judge Carl Marlinga, who is considered the Democratic frontrunner given he was the nominee two years ago, as insufficiently supportive of abortion rights.

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a right to abortion nationally, turning the issue back to the states to decide. Michigan in that same year voted to guarantee abortion through a ballot initiative which was overwhelmingly supported; some states, however, have further curtailed abortion access.

Busch is running in her first race for Congress, hoping to take on James in what is considered a tossup seat. When she announced she was running, she hit James for his anti-abortion stance and support of gun rights. Busch's son, Andrew, was among the students locked down during a deadly shooting rampage at Oxford High School in November 2021.

In the ad, Busch calls James "100% against a woman's right to choose" and says he has voted "repeatedly to ban abortion without exceptions for rape or incest." In the past, he has been against those exceptions. But James, in the last year, has indicated that while he still supports abortion restrictions, he believes there should be exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest or circumstances where the mother's life is in danger.

Many Republicans, like James, have softened earlier views on abortion restrictions in the wake of the Supreme Court decision and successful campaigns by Democrats to use it against Republicans in the 2022 elections. Democrats are ramping up attacks on Republicans again this year, arguing they would try to enact a national ban if they could.

Busch also hit Marlinga, a Catholic, for his earlier opposition to abortion, though he has made it clear he supports abortion rights and believes the decision is a private one. She references Marlinga's initial delay, when he was Macomb County prosector, in allowing a family to travel to Kansas in 1998 to get a late-term abortion for their 12-year-old daughter who had been impregnated by her 17-year-old brother. Marlinga told the Free Press two years ago he only did so at the time because he wanted to make sure first that someone outside the family — a psychologist — considered what was best for the girl before she had the abortion.

Busch also noted that Marlinga has, in the past, said in a survey that he shares a judicial temperament like that of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative who signed on to the decision overturning Roe. Marlinga has told the Detroit Metro Times that he, like Thomas, considers himself a "strict constitutionalist" but as an abortion rights supporter he would have upheld Roe v. Wade.

Marlinga, Busch, Warren financial planner Diane Young and state Board of Education member Tiffany Tilley are running for the Democratic nomination in the 10th District to face James in the fall.

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.