Voters kick all the Republican women out of the South Carolina SenateAP 1 Jul 2024
The only three Republican women in the South Carolina Senate took on their party and stopped a total abortion ban from passing in their state last year
Voters kick all the Republican women out of the South Carolina SenateBy JEFFREY COLLINSAssociated PressThe Associated PressCOLUMBIA, S.C.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The only three Republican women in the South Carolina Senate took on their party and stopped a total abortion ban from passing in their state last year. In return, they lost their jobs.
Voters removed Sens. Sandy Senn, Penry Gustafson and Katrina Shealy from office during sparsely turned out primaries in June, and by doing so completely vacated the Republican wing of the five-member “Sister Senators,” a female contingent that included two Democrats and was joined in their opposition to the abortion ban.
For Republicans, the departure of Senn, Gustafson and Shealy likely means there will be no women in the majority party of state Senate when the next session starts in 2025. It could also mean that women will not wield power for decades in the fiercely conservative state where they have long struggled to gain entry into the Legislature.
How scant has political influence historically been for women in South Carolina? Small portraits of every woman who has ever served in the 170-seat General Assembly in the 250 years it has met fit on a poster framed just outside the governor’s office.
The sudden departure of the Republican women presents a potential power issue because the Senate doles out clout and responsibility to the majority party based on seniority. Half the members in the GOP dominated state were elected in 2012 or before, so it will likely be the 2040s before any Republican woman elected in the future can rise to leadership or a committee chairmanship.
“Women, somebody else is going to have to stand up. Somebody else is going to have to come and make things right,” Senn said in her farewell speech on June 26.
Barring a woman winning a race in November in a district dominated by the other party, there will be only two women in the 46-member South Carolina Senate when the 126th session starts in January. No other state in the country would have fewer women in its upper chamber, according to Center of American Women in Politics. Women make up 55% of the state’s registered voters.
That gap should be alarming to anyone in South Carolina, said Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, who took her seat this year in a special election and became the sixth member of the Sister Senators. Next year Devine and fellow Democrat Sen. Margie Bright Matthews will likely be the only women in the chamber.
“No matter how much empathy men can have, they have not had babies. They have not had hysterectomies. They haven’t had some of the heath care issues or the community issues we deal with every day,” Devine said.
Instead of a total ban on abortion, South Carolina ended up with a ban once cardiac activity is detected, typically six weeks into a pregnancy.
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