Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, claimed that women were literally dying because Democrats are losing elections. He linked high maternal mortality rates to Democratic losses during a speech Friday before the Progressive Change Campaign Committee candidate training event.
Ellison talked about not giving up after his loss to Tom Perez for the DNC chairmanship.
“They need me to put more in, they need me to put my back into it, more than before,” Ellison said of women needing Democrats in office. “Because their lives depend upon it."
"Did you know that in Missouri and in Texas, and maybe other places, maternal mortality has risen?" he asked.
"Women are dying because we are losing elections," Ellison said. "We don't have the right to lose a damn election. We have to win."
Later in his speech, Ellison called for universal healthcare.
The statistic Ellison was referring to in Missouri has been attributed to the larger number of women in the state who drink or are obese. The statistics in Texas have been attributed to flawed data.
Ellison is not the first one to fall for the flawed Texas study and make a political claim based on it. Soon to be former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards cited that statistic in January of 2017 pointing out that it was after the State cut funding to Planned Parenthood in 2011.
The fact-checking website Snopes.com took on that claim in August 2016, calling the correlation between maternal death and defunding Planned Parenthood “unproven.”