The photo of state Sen. Renee Unterman and her 33 fellow Republican besties who helped push through the "heartbeat" abortion bill was a testament to solidarity. And by that, I mean solid as in solidly white male except for the centerpiece of the photo.
The state Senate passed the bill 34-18, along party lines, on March 22. But the thing that stood out to me was, “Where are all the Republican women?!?” The only other GOP woman in the Senate, Kay Kirkpatrick, was at a funeral.
In the state House, 13 of the 15 Republican women voted for a bill that would effectively make abortion illegal after 6 weeks. That's right, 105 Republicans serve in the House but just 15 are women. (The House passed the bill 92-78, largely along party lines, on March 29.)
Across the aisle, 41 of the 42 Democratic women in the House and all 13 of the Democratic women in the Senate voted against the measure.
That means out of the 126 legislators who voted to limit maybe the most wrenching and private thing a woman can decide to do, only 14 were women.
The bill is sure to be signed into law and Democrats will use it to keep picking off GOP legislative seats like they did in last year's elections.
One of the arguments you’re sure to hear is that Georgia is a patriarchy where white conservative men force their beliefs on women’s most intimate decisions. And the math will back up that argument.
The votes themselves were not surprising. What surprised me was how testosterone-driven the Republican caucus is — and how much estrogen is on the Democratic side.
Of the 140 Republican legislators, just 17 are women — or 12 percent.
Of the 96 Democratic legislators, 55 are women — or 57 percent.
A photo on the Democratic House Caucus website shows 22 House Dems, 15 of whom are women and mostly people of color. It kind of looks like one of those United Colors of Benetton ads from years ago, the ones that showed all genders and hues combined for a stylish cause.
Actually, Georgia is not terrible — comparatively — when it comes to women in the Legislature. We are at 30.5 percent, putting us in 19th place in the U.S., according to the National Conference of State Legislators. But that's only because the Dems are more than doing their part, both in Georgia and nationwide, where Democratic female lawmakers outnumber Republican women more than 2-1.
I called Rep. Sharon Cooper, a Republican who came to the state House in 1997. Cooper, a nurse from Marietta, was one of the handful of Republicans who voted against the "heartbeat" bill.
I mentioned the slim numbers of Republican women in the Legislature. Why is that?
Cooper paused to consider the question. “I think part of it is Republican women, if you look at us, tend to …” She paused again. “There’s not a lot of young Republican women. Sometimes they pursue careers or focus on motherhood before they pursue a legislative career.
“It’s not like we don’t recruit,” she said. “Politics has just gotten very nasty. I don’t know if people want to get involved. But I really don’t know why.”
When Cooper came to the state Capitol in 1997, the Republicans were the minority party with about the same numbers of women legislators — 12 percent — as they have today. Back then, 23 percent of the Democrats were women.
Former state Sen. Fran Millar, a veteran Republican lawmaker from Dunwoody, was defeated last year by a Democratic woman, Sally Harrell, as his north metro county grew more liberal.
When asked about the dearth of elected Republican females, Millar mirrored Cooper, saying, “I really don’t have an answer.”
Millar noted that younger voters are more likely to vote for women. And polls show more suburban women are cooling on the Republican Party in the era of Trump. Millar was the victim of a tidal wave in a demographically changing district where a ton of new voters came out last year with Stacey Abrams running for governor.
Millar believes the “heartbeat” bill, which he said he would have voted against, might be used successfully against Republicans in the suburbs.
To combat that, Republicans need to encourage women to run, he said. “It’s called survival; that’s where we are this time,” he said. “They have to, if they want to win.”
Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan, who gave an impassioned speech against the abortion bill before the vote, said initiatives such as the "heartbeat" bill probably keep Republican women from running for office.
“Each of us (senators) represents 200,000 people,” Jordan said. “Tell me there are only two women worthy of representing Republican districts. The lack of women, period, is a real problem. We have a different life experience that we can bring.”
Her colleague, Democratic state Sen. Steve Henson, is now an anomaly in that chamber. He is the only white male Democrat left in a Senate that was dominated by them when he arrived in 1991. Henson barely held onto his seat last year, almost getting defeated by an African-American woman.
Partisan gerrymandering has caused the demise of white male Democrats such as Henson because the maps crowd black voters into districts that favor black candidates and allow Republicans to carve out more white GOP districts.
Still, Henson said, “I think we have a more engaged and energetic base.” One that may end up sending him to political retirement.
Rusty Paul, the mayor of Sandy Springs and former chairman of the state Republican Party, noted that three Republican women in north Atlanta and in the suburbs were defeated last year. (Former Rep. Beth Beskin, one of those women, was surprised by the low number of female legislators when she came to the Capitol in 2015.)
Paul said getting women to run has been a real challenge.
“The Republican Party has not been hospitable to highly educated, successful women who live in the suburbs,” he said. “The question is how do you get highly educated, successful women to warm up to Donald Trump?”
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