As Republicans across the country head to Milwaukee for next week’s Republican National Convention, abortion won’t be at the forefront of the GOP’s weeklong nomination of former President Donald Trump.
In a new platform released by the party ahead of the convention, Republican leaders agreed that “power [on abortion] has been given to the States and to a vote of the People,” leaving the issue of gestational limits to individual states.
In states like South Carolina, that could mean a near-total abortion ban, as three GOP women who stood against a six-week ban last year have been voted out in the Republican primary this summer.
The three women — state Sens. Sandy Senn, Penry Gustafson and Katrina Shealy — joined two Democratic women to create a coalition dubbed the “sister senators.”
The five, who happened to be the only women in the state Senate, filibustered to block one version of the anti-abortion law, earning national awards and recognition.
But the move, and their subsequent votes against the abortion ban that became law, cost the Republican women their political careers.
“We’re not stupid,” Senn told NBC News in a phone interview last month. “We certainly knew that as the Republican women that there could easily be [political] fallout.”
Senn, Shealy and Gustafson all lost their chance at re-election in primary challenges from Republican men.
That means there will likely be no Republican women left in the chamber once the next term starts, something Senn and Gustafson described as devastating.
“There’s a bigger picture here,” Gustafson said in separate a phone interview last month. “What this means is with Katrina Shealy being the only woman chairperson of a committee — it took her years to get to that point.”
Gustafson added: “With the Republicans as the supermajority, Republicans will be committee chairs. So, there are no Republican women. That means no committee chairs for years. Somebody has to get elected, then they have to serve, and they have to prove themselves and get chosen. ... As I see it, we will not be able to have another female committee chair for a minimum of 15 years. Minimum.”
Former Lancaster County Councilman Allen Blackmon, state Rep. Matt Leber and Carlisle Kennedy, the three men who defeated the GOP “sister senators,” all describe themselves as anti-abortion. It’s unclear how they would have voted on the bill, but critics fear they may support a more extreme abortion ban if it comes before them in the state Senate.
Kennedy has gone so far as to tell the Lexington County Chronicle that he had “a difference of opinion” with Shealy over her vote against the abortion law.
Redistricting, which was completed in 2021 and made Gustafson’s and Senn’s districts more conservative, may have also played a role in the primary outcomes, they said.
“At the time of the vote, I was certain that my district was the most in danger of being lost to this vote,” Gustafson said, adding: “I knew that because I have a very, very conservative district, and with redistricting, it became more so.”
Senn added that her district was redrawn to incorporate a much more rural and conservative part of the state, where “these folks would, I would say, think differently than those who live in, say, Dorchester or Summerville or Charleston, which is where I’m from,” she said.
There will likely be only two women in the state Senate when the next session begins in 2025, state Sen. Margie Bright Matthews, one of the Democrats who joined the “sister senators” filibuster, and state Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, a Democrat who won a special election and was sworn into office earlier this year.
“This isn’t about gender politics,” Gustafson said, adding that “Republicans like to say, ‘Oh, that’s just gender politics.’ No, it’s not. We’ve got over half of our population is women in South Carolina, over half.”
Senn added that she didn’t think the state’s current abortion law or any future bans would prevent women from seeking reproductive care, particularly because abortion-inducing pills like mifepristone are widely available online, sometimes from nonmedical websites and sometimes shipped from overseas.
One study earlier this year found that women, pregnant and nonpregnant, are requesting abortion pills online more often, including from services that allow telehealth appointments from states where abortion is not as restricted.
“Women are going to do what women are going to do regardless of any law,” Senn said.
A study from the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights think tank, found that abortion rates are relatively the same between nations where abortion is legal and where it’s restricted.
Both Gustafson and Senn said that despite their primary losses, they don’t regret their decision to stand against South Carolina’s abortion ban, even though it was later passed.
The female senators from both sides of the aisle gathered last month to watch the results of Shealy’s primary election roll in. She lost after garnering just 37.5% of the vote.
“I didn’t really cry until Katrina’s primary night, and we all did,” Gustafson said. “I got more emotional as I saw my sister senators arrive at the location one by one.”
“But having us there together, it seemed to kind of close the circle. It, it was, it just seemed right. And we have a genuine bond that I really didn’t even imagine even a year ago we would have,” she added.
The women plan to stick together even as some of them are leaving the chamber, Senn and Gustafson told NBC News.
Gustafson noted that she’s spoken with Senn and Shealy about tentative plans to start a consulting project to help future Republican women looking to run for office in the Palmetto State.
“But right now, that’s just an idea,” Gustafson added.
