Minnesota's Erin Maye Quade powered through a convention speech while in active labor

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Pregnant people face structural oppression and discrimination at just about every turn when it comes to employment and, extra disturbingly, health care. This point is especially true for pregnant folks who live with more than one marginalized identity, like pregnant people of color and trans pregnant folks. Black women, for example, are routinely disbelieved when it comes to health concerns and pain management and are over three times more likely to die during pregnancy or postpartum than white women.

This context is important to keep in mind when thinking about Maye Quade, the 36-year-old openly gay progressive Black woman running for state senate in Minnesota, who had a big speech to deliver over the weekend. The purpose of the speech was to get an endorsement from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in order to get her party’s nomination. (For reference, the DFL is basically the state’s version of the Democratic Party). Quade started going into labor at about 2 in the morning prior to the speech but did her best to push through contractions in order to give her speech and participate in question and answer rounds. Ultimately, she had to withdraw from the convention because she had to go to the hospital and her opponent, Justin Emmerich, won.

Why didn’t anyone stop the convention? Why did people expect a pregnant person, and especially a Black woman, at that, to (ahem) push through the pain? Videos of Quade from the convention are inspiring to be sure, but as many folks on Twitter are pointing out, we can’t ignore these deeper questions.

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Here is a short clip, which is currently going viral on Twitter.

Mitchell Walstad, who serves as Quade’s campaign manager, talked to the HuffPost in an interview about what went down at the convention. According to Walstad, there were points where Quade went into a private room to have her contractions and then estimated she had between 15 and 20 minutes to go talk to delegates before the next set came. 

“There were points where it was her turn to answer,” Walstad recalled to the outlet. “And they had to switch the order and have the other candidate answer because she could not speak because she was having a contraction in front of everyone.”

According to Walstad, the team did not directly ask the convention to stop because Quade had to go to the hospital. But of course, it’s more than fair to wonder why organizers didn’t simply make the call themselves. 

Walstad fairly pointed out that if a candidate was having another sort of medical emergency, like a heart attack, they would have stopped balloting. It’s also important to point out that while some medical emergencies can appear (at least to outsiders) as out of nowhere, something like labor is generally ongoing and a deeply emotional and vulnerable experience. Having to keep yourself together in an effort to appear professional is frankly outrageous. Add to that the additional pressures Black women may feel thanks to white supremacy and structural racism, it’s pretty clear that Quade is an absolute icon and that convention organizers should have stepped in and done the right thing. 

In speaking to local outlet KSTP, Walstad said the campaign was “frustrated” at the way the convention went and said it was “discouraging” that the endorsement wasn’t suspended given the circumstances.

If you’re curious about how balloting goes, Quade was present for the first round but made the call to go to the hospital before she felt able to do more work with delegates to get enough votes for the second round. Justin Emmerich, her. opponent, got more votes in the first round, coming in at 55% compared to Quade’s 45%, but the 55% was not enough to actually win, which is why Quade hypothetically had the chance to speak directly with delegates and convince them to get their vote.

But because she was in labor, and had been for hours at that point, she made the reasonable decision to go to the hospital and thus had to withdraw from the convention. According to local outlet FOX 9, Quade’s contractions started at around 2 in the morning, and candidates gave their first speeches at 11 in the morning, followed by the question and answer sessions. And she was in labor that entire time. 

Ultimately, this means Emmerich won the final round by default (because he was at that point unopposed) and secured the party’s endorsement for the upcoming primary in August.

Quade’s wife, Alyse Maye Quade, told the outlet Quade ultimately gave birth to their child at 2 am the following morning, about 24 hours after labor began. She told the outlet that both Quade and the baby were healthy and resting.

You can watch a video of Quade at the convention below. (Labor aside, this speech is truly great and well worth a watch, but Quade’s strength and dedication are truly something to behold.)