The Metro: Mallory McMorrow on the clinics that closed, the race she left, and what her party got wrong
The Michigan Senate majority whip on the Planned Parenthood closures in her own district, why the state didn’t step in, and the U.S. Senate campaign she suspended in July.
Michigan Senate Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow speaking with Russ McNamara at the Mackinac Policy Conference on May 28, 2026.
In 2022, Michigan voters wrote reproductive rights into the state constitution. Planned Parenthood of Michigan had fourteen health centers then. Today, it has seven.
Planned Parenthood says it sees nearly 60,000 Michiganders a year. Of the three centers that closed at the end of July, none performed procedural abortions.
They closed on a single day. Lansing, Livonia, Warren.
The Ferndale clinic is still open because Oakland County commissioners voted on Aug. 13 to spend up to $1.5 million to keep it operating through 2028.
Ferndale sits in state Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s district. McMorrow, the majority whip of the Michigan Senate, spent the past year running for the U.S. Senate — and suspended her campaign a month before the primary.
McMorrow spoke with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent about the clinics that have closed in her district and across Michigan, what the state did and didn’t do to stop it, and the U.S. Senate campaign she walked away from.
Hear the full conversation using the media player above.
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