A GOP SC senator went viral on The State’s TikTok. Why? She bucked party lines on abortion
Republican men should be shaking in their boots right now.
A video posted to The State’s TikTok account, which has gone certifiably viral, shows why they should be scared: women banding together and rising above party. It also shows the disconnect of a party of mostly men trying to figure out how to restrict women’s reproductive health care.
The Palmetto State has always been a bellwether of conservatives’ thoughts and how they’ll vote. So of course a cultural touching point that demonstrates the effects of the abortion debate on the Republican Party was recorded under the bronze dome of the South Carolina State House.
The two-minute clip of a longer discussion shows S.C. Senate President Shane Massey, a Republican from Edgefield, debating the constitutionality of abortion restrictions with Sen. Sandy Senn, also a Republican. She represents Charleston.
After about a minute of the clip, Massey crumbles and spits up a juvenile attack about her missing a meeting. Senn calls him out.
Early in the clip, while talking about South Carolina’s Constitutional amendment that grants a right to privacy, Massey says the amendment “doesn’t say anything about your female parts.”
Senn reads the amendment: “It says we do not have to suffer an unreasonable invasion of privacy.”
Next, she essentially slaps Massey in the face with the state constitution by saying, “If what’s going on in my vagina is not an unreasonable invasion of privacy for this legislature to get involved in, then I don’t know what is.”
Woah. A lot was said in just a few words there. Let’s break down why this video went viral.
First, Senn is making almost the exact argument that established the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling as the authority on abortion in the United States before it was unjustly overturned. Abortion can’t be denied because people have a right to privacy and that doesn’t stop in a doctor’s office where an abortion is performed. The only difference is she’s applying that logic to state law instead of federal law.
The clip shows an aspect of the the abortion debate that the GOP, the party with by far a higher proportion of men to women nationally and in South Carolina, never thought might come back and bite them. They didn’t consider it because most Republican lawmakers can’t. They’re men.
That aspect is how personal abortion is to women and how impersonal it is to men.
Massey says “your female parts.”
Senn says “my vagina.”
That summarizes the personal factor. Senn knows how her body could be effected by restrictions. Massey has no such physical connection to abortion restrictions.
This distinction gets to the core of why the video blew up Tik Tok. It gives women a personal hero.; someone who is standing up for what’s right. That’s what people want in the world.
Some might say “Massey is actually the one standing up for what’s right.” Well, if he is, he just lost the battle for what’s right because of what happens next in the clip.
Massey has no real response to what Senn says. No rational person could argue with the idea that a person’s organs are protected by privacy rights. Hell, we call them private parts.
This is another reason the video got internet famous. It shows the irrationality of a Republican man trying to restrict abortion and the illogical leaps he has to go through. In the common tongue, he put his foot in his mouth.
So Massey tries to critique her for not showing up to a meeting. He deflects from the real issues — and quite poorly at that — by trying to attack her character.
Let’s be honest. We all hate meetings. So, again, Senn comes off as more personal even before she shuts down this critique by saying that her vote in the meeting was counted.
“I’m here now on the floor, sir, which is exactly where it’s appropriate” to make a point about privacy and abortion, Senn told Massey.
“I’m here now.”
That’s says it all. That’s why this video went viral. It shows a woman standing up for herself.
That’s exactly why Republican men in South Carolina and across the nation should be cowering while they witness what’s been unleashed by trying to further restrict abortion.
Republican men might have thought they could push Republican women aside or that those women would be silent and just follow the men’s lead. They were wrong.
Republican men thought women weren’t going to stand up in droves and vote against them? They were wrong.
Senn’s arguing that abortion is subject to privacy rights shows that she is willing to go against her party on an issue that seems to be stuck in the trenches of partisanship.
When the country’s conservative party is going deeper and deeper into psychosis, Senn gives people hope that politicians can rise above party ideology and be reasonable.
If Senn is willing to go against her party in the South Carolina State House, practically the frontal lobe of the GOP’s brain, then other women in the state are willing to do it, and women across the South are willing to do it, and women across the country are willing to do it.
They are here now.
This story was originally published September 15, 2022 at 2:28 PM.