Last year, the five self-proclaimed “Sister Senators” from South Carolina were awarded the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award after they joined together across party lines to block the legislature from passing a near-total abortion ban.
But a prize from the nation’s most storied Democratic family may not be the best calling card in Republican primaries in the red-state South.
All three of the Republican women in the group of five — the others were a Democrat and an independent — faced primary challenges, and all three have now lost. State Senator Katrina Shealy, who was the only female member of the chamber after she won in 2012, failed to win a runoff on Tuesday against the son of a former legislator.
The two others lost earlier this month: Penry Gustafson lost by a 64 point margin; Sandy Senn lost by 33 votes, small enough to trigger a recount, but conceded the race before that.
South Carolina ranks 47th for the number of women in its state legislature, just above Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia. The losses this month are likely to mean that no Republican women will serve in the next session. Ms. Shealy was the only woman to lead a committee in the chamber.
While the Sister Senators succeeded three times in blocking a near-total ban that would have defined life as beginning at conception, the Senate then passed a six-week ban that was upheld by the State Supreme Court (which had recently lost its only female justice).
The Republican-controlled state senate is likely to try to pass another ban starting at conception next year, and it stands a good chance of succeeding now that the three women have lost.
Even so, the losses may have been about more than the strength of anti-abortion sentiment in South Carolina.
Senators Gustafson and Senn were running in newly redrawn districts where there were more conservatives and fewer constituents familiar with their records. Polls have shown that the near-total ban had little statewide support and that a majority of residents, as in almost every state, wants abortion to be legal in all or most cases.
The leading figures of the state’s Republican Party in the State House and Congress mounted a big turn-out-the-vote campaign for Ms. Shealy, and she had the backing of Americans for Prosperity, the libertarian-leaning Republican group.
But turnout in the primaries was low, and those who vote in primaries tend to be the most fervent on issues like abortion that are important to the party’s base. And all of the women’s challengers supported the near-total abortion ban. On billboards and in mailings, they accused the women of being insufficiently conservative and not “pro-life.” Ms. Shealy faced a particularly nasty runoff. She said that protesters picketed her church, slashed a tire on her car and fired shots from a pellet gun through her sunroom window.
One mailing pictured Ms. Shealy with Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, Democrats who were previous Profile in Courage Award winners.
The senators painted their defeats as a loss for women. “These results removed any ambiguity or question about where the voting Republicans stand regarding both life issues and women. And it’s not good,” Ms. Gustafson told The Post and Courier. “What we have to say about giving birth and everything related to it is secondary to whatever the men of the Republican Party want.”
Ms. Shealy told the South Carolina Daily Gazette that her next work might be trying to get more women involved in politics. “I’m not upset about my loss,” she said. “I’m curious about how this job will get done by men. I feel a loss for the people of South Carolina.”