When the fight over the right to abortion fell to the states, it landed awkwardly in Senate Office 601, where two Republicans who share the same suite, receptionist and voice-mail box have campaigned all year against each other’s idea of “pro-life.”
On one side of the roughly 800-square-foot space is Sen. Rex Rice, 66, who said every pregnancy represented “God’s child” and pushed for a near-total ban on abortion in South Carolina.
On the other is Sen. Sandy Senn, 59, who, loudly enough for him to hear, slammed that approach as “all about controlling women.”
To her, “pro-life” means protecting women, too. So, with the Senate expected to vote as early as Tuesday on a bill that would ban most abortions after about six weeks, Senn criticized her colleague for refusing to support what she called the “reasonable” middle ground: outlawing the procedure after 12 weeks.
“I suspect his wife thinks what he’s doing is crazy, but I haven’t asked her,” Senn said one May afternoon, reclining behind her wooden desk. “Is he in there?”
The senators have been friends for seven years, ever since they were sworn in at the same time, and have vacationed together with their families in the Bahamas. Once, after Senn tangled with a prominent Democrat, Rice gifted her a pair of pink boxing gloves and a photo of a Chihuahua barking at a big dog, which reminded him of his 5-foot-3 suitemate taking on opponents who towered over her.
“It’s always interesting to me to watch the two- and three-pound dogs go after the big dogs,” he said. “The big dogs just don’t care.”
Today, the suitemates are locked in an uncomfortably personal stalemate — one that reflects broader discord between Republican lawmakers over how far to restrict abortion access now that Roe v. Wade has been struck down.
The tensions in Office 601 stem from an unusually stark gender divide that has emerged in the South Carolina State House as the Republican-dominated legislature keeps trying and failing to pass tighter abortion restrictions.
Senn, along with the two other Republican women in the Senate, has adopted rhetoric more typically used by Democrats to attack the antiabortion positions of her male colleagues.
Three times over the past eight months, as the chamber’s GOP leaders have sought to prohibit most procedures starting at conception, Senn — flanked by a bipartisan bloc of the Senate’s only women — has hustled to thwart what she views as attempts to “shackle women.” The group — three Republicans, an independent and a Democrat, who call themselves the “Sister Senators” — filibustered for three days last month to defeat a near-total ban.
“Even if we don’t agree with abortion, most of us agree with giving women some kind of escape hatch,” Senn said. “My male colleagues are taking the wrong approach. We’re going to lose people in the Republican Party.”
If Senn is successful, bright-red South Carolina, which currently prohibits abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy, could remain a destination for the procedure in the heavily restricted South. A 12-week ban would still permit the majority of abortions, though Democrats call the limit “extreme,” in part because many pregnancy complications, which could affect a woman’s decision, arise after that point.
Republicans deploy new playbook for abortion bans, citing political backlash
Roe’s demise last summer initially triggered a six-week ban in South Carolina. After legal challenges, however, the state’s Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional, kicking off internal GOP feuding that has remained unresolved.
Republican lawmakers in other conservative states have faced similar debates over the past year.
Under pressure from antiabortion activists, some have sought to virtually eliminate a practice they decry as murder. Others, noting that key swaths of voters have rejected dramatically rolling back abortion rights, are exploring less restrictive measures. North Carolina and Nebraska last week, for instance, enacted 12-week bans similar to the one Senn embraces.
She blamed Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey for leading the party “off a cliff on abortion” instead of being open to the 12-week “middle ground.” She pointed to polls showing that the majority of Americans think abortion in most cases should be legal.
Massey criticized Senn’s “overall” conduct.
“She firebombs,” he told The Washington Post. “She goes after people personally, and that has rubbed them the wrong way.”
Senn, a Charleston lawyer who raises chickens and owns nine guns, said she is focused on standing up for women. Many women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks, she said, giving them no time to make the best decision for their health. During one speech in April, she compared the all-male drive to strip women of “reasonable” reproductive agency to the dystopian world of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
“It’s always about control, plain and simple,” she said. “And in the Senate, the males all have control.”
As she consulted her online thesaurus for filibuster material to combat the looming ban attempt, Rice, the senator from Pickens County, argued on his end of Office 601 in favor of it.
On one side of the roughly 800-square-foot space is Sen. Rex Rice, 66, who said every pregnancy represented “God’s child” and pushed for a near-total ban on abortion in South Carolina.
On the other is Sen. Sandy Senn, 59, who, loudly enough for him to hear, slammed that approach as “all about controlling women.”
To her, “pro-life” means protecting women, too. So, with the Senate expected to vote as early as Tuesday on a bill that would ban most abortions after about six weeks, Senn criticized her colleague for refusing to support what she called the “reasonable” middle ground: outlawing the procedure after 12 weeks.
“I suspect his wife thinks what he’s doing is crazy, but I haven’t asked her,” Senn said one May afternoon, reclining behind her wooden desk. “Is he in there?”
The senators have been friends for seven years, ever since they were sworn in at the same time, and have vacationed together with their families in the Bahamas. Once, after Senn tangled with a prominent Democrat, Rice gifted her a pair of pink boxing gloves and a photo of a Chihuahua barking at a big dog, which reminded him of his 5-foot-3 suitemate taking on opponents who towered over her.
“It’s always interesting to me to watch the two- and three-pound dogs go after the big dogs,” he said. “The big dogs just don’t care.”
Today, the suitemates are locked in an uncomfortably personal stalemate — one that reflects broader discord between Republican lawmakers over how far to restrict abortion access now that Roe v. Wade has been struck down.
The tensions in Office 601 stem from an unusually stark gender divide that has emerged in the South Carolina State House as the Republican-dominated legislature keeps trying and failing to pass tighter abortion restrictions.
Senn, along with the two other Republican women in the Senate, has adopted rhetoric more typically used by Democrats to attack the antiabortion positions of her male colleagues.
Three times over the past eight months, as the chamber’s GOP leaders have sought to prohibit most procedures starting at conception, Senn — flanked by a bipartisan bloc of the Senate’s only women — has hustled to thwart what she views as attempts to “shackle women.” The group — three Republicans, an independent and a Democrat, who call themselves the “Sister Senators” — filibustered for three days last month to defeat a near-total ban.
“Even if we don’t agree with abortion, most of us agree with giving women some kind of escape hatch,” Senn said. “My male colleagues are taking the wrong approach. We’re going to lose people in the Republican Party.”
If Senn is successful, bright-red South Carolina, which currently prohibits abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy, could remain a destination for the procedure in the heavily restricted South. A 12-week ban would still permit the majority of abortions, though Democrats call the limit “extreme,” in part because many pregnancy complications, which could affect a woman’s decision, arise after that point.
Republicans deploy new playbook for abortion bans, citing political backlash
Roe’s demise last summer initially triggered a six-week ban in South Carolina. After legal challenges, however, the state’s Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional, kicking off internal GOP feuding that has remained unresolved.
Republican lawmakers in other conservative states have faced similar debates over the past year.
Under pressure from antiabortion activists, some have sought to virtually eliminate a practice they decry as murder. Others, noting that key swaths of voters have rejected dramatically rolling back abortion rights, are exploring less restrictive measures. North Carolina and Nebraska last week, for instance, enacted 12-week bans similar to the one Senn embraces.
She blamed Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey for leading the party “off a cliff on abortion” instead of being open to the 12-week “middle ground.” She pointed to polls showing that the majority of Americans think abortion in most cases should be legal.
Massey criticized Senn’s “overall” conduct.
“She firebombs,” he told The Washington Post. “She goes after people personally, and that has rubbed them the wrong way.”
Senn, a Charleston lawyer who raises chickens and owns nine guns, said she is focused on standing up for women. Many women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks, she said, giving them no time to make the best decision for their health. During one speech in April, she compared the all-male drive to strip women of “reasonable” reproductive agency to the dystopian world of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
“It’s always about control, plain and simple,” she said. “And in the Senate, the males all have control.”
As she consulted her online thesaurus for filibuster material to combat the looming ban attempt, Rice, the senator from Pickens County, argued on his end of Office 601 in favor of it.
