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 primaries with sparse turnout 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 united 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 the 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.
- 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 the Center of American Women in Politics.
- That gap should be alarming to anyone in South Carolina, says 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 says.
- Historically, it's been worse in the South Carolina Senate for women. There were no women there from 2009 to 2013, when Shealy was first elected. Her goals were protecting veterans, women, families, children, and other vulnerable groups.
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