Texas State Senator Wendy Davis
It’s nighttime in Austin. Republicans control every statewide office and most local offices across the great state of Texas, a vast majority of the state’s seats to the United States House of Representatives, and majorities in both the Texas Senate and the Texas House. A new bill threatening to make it nearly impossible to get an abortion within the state is about to pass along nearly partisan lines despite the United States Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey that affirm a woman’s right to decide what to do with her body. Stopping this law, which is strongly supported by the longest serving governor in Texas history, Rick Perry, seems impossible.
In steps Wendy Davis, a Texas Senator. A Democrat from Fort Worth, Texas, Ms. Davis has become an overnight national star on the left after she spent 11 hours filibustering the bill in a display not often seen in today’s political environment. She had prepared for the event, and had planned to spend 13 hours filibustering, but was cut short by Republican Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst who ended it through a procedural maneuver in order to vote on the bill. While the bill passed 19 to 10, the vote did not count because it occurred after midnight, the end of the legislative session. Mr. Perry has vowed to bring the bill back in a special session and will probably pass it. This is nevertheless a victory, however fleeting, that has raised the moral of the center-left in Texas.
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