06/14/2024
On Tuesday, South Carolina Republican voters delivered crushing defeats to pro-choice Republican state legislators. Meanwhile, voters rewarded abortion abolitionists, as all abolitionist incumbents won their primaries.
Last year, pro-abortion Republicans state senators, Penry Gustafson, Sandy Senn and Katrina Shealy filibustered the Life at Conception Act and opposed the SC Heartbeat Bill on the grounds that both laws were too restrictive. This year, all three received primary challenges from anti-abortion Republicans. Let’s see how these pro-choice Republican incumbents faired:
Gustafson endured possibly the most humiliating defeat for an incumbent legislator in history. After opposing even the most compromising attempts to regulate abortion, voters kicked her to the curb selecting unabashedly anti-abortion Allen Blackmon by a LANDSLIDE margin of 83-17!
Sandy Senn is one of the most obnoxiously pro-abortion Republicans in the country. Leaning into feminazi rhetoric, she described the compromise heartbeat bill as “crazily oppressive.” On Tuesday, she lost her primary to anti-abortion Republican, Matt Leber, by 31 votes.
Katrina Shealy, who has also fought against any efforts to regulate abortion was forced into a runoff, barely securing 40% of the vote. She will face anti-abortion candidate Carlisle Kennedy in a runoff, where she will very likely lose.
Voters not only rejected pro-abortion Republicans, but they rewarded legislators who are fighting for the abolition of abortion by establishing equal protection for the preborn. Abolitionist champions Rob Harris and Josiah Magnuson, who both faced well-funded, establishment-backed primary challengers, crushed their opponents by margins of 58-42 and 65-35, respectively. Harris, Magnuson and several other abolitionists in the legislature have a mandate from the voters to continue their fight to establish justice for their preborn neighbors.
South Carolina voters sent a strong message to Republicans who argue we need to sacrifice preborn children on the altar of “winning elections.” Let this be a warning to any Republican who wants to compromise with the evil of abortion: do so at your own electoral peril.