CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Outside the chambers of the West Virginia Legislature, the marble foyer was packed with young women in T-shirts, ripped jeans, and gym shorts holding signs with uteruses drawn in colored marker.
“Bans off our bodies,” the signs said. “Abortion is essential.”
Inside, a group of lawmakers, almost all of them men, sat at desks in pressed suits, doing their best to talk over protesters’ chants carrying through the heavy wooden doors.
A stark gender divide has emerged in debates unfolding in Republican-led states including West Virginia, Indiana and South Carolina following the U.