I've seen more of this building in the past few days than I have in the past 10 years. The Texas Capitol stands brilliant and beautiful over the sprawling expanse of Austin, erected as a "fuck you" to the States we so begrudgingly reentered after our foray into independence.
State Senator Wendy Davis is standing on the floor below, clad in a light blue suit and tennis shoes, piles of binders and papers before her. Above, in the gallery, sit hundreds of onlookers, wearing orange, with a brief smattering of blue shirts in the upper right corner, representing the pro-life movement.
I had come in about an hour and a half earlier, toting two huge things of Starbucks. I don't drink coffee, but I figured my fellow protestors wouldn't mind a caffeine boost. We would be there awhile. I had trekked up the three flights of stairs, finding a harried Planned Parenthood organizer who grabbed the coffee with a grateful nod and hurried off to find a place for it. I made my way to the back of the already sizable line forming around the third level of the rotunda to garner a place in the senate gallery.
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If you haven't been following the firestorm of digital media regarding what happened in Texas on Tuesday, I'll explain. Back during the legislative session, a few bills had been introduced to further curtail abortion services in the state. They would require every abortion to take place in an ambulatory surgical center (already required for abortions taking place after 16 weeks). Currently there are only five ASCs in the entire state, and to renovate current abortion clinics with the new standards would cost millions of dollars. They would require every doctor providing abortion services to have a hospital affiliation within thirty miles of where they practice, again severely restricting access to abortion, especially in rural communities. And it would ban abortion after 20 weeks, unless the mother was in "imminent danger" of losing a "major bodily function." The bills had not been passed during the regular legislative session, and so Gov. Rick Perry had called a special session to address them.
The Thursday prior, hundreds of women (and men) packed the Reagan building, just north of the Capitol, to stage a people's filibuster aimed at stopping the bills. Hundreds (including me) signed up to tell their personal stories to the tired committee members. Women recounted their stories of fighting for their right to choose during the 1960s, of back-alley abortions and shame and danger and an overwhelming fatigue with fighting this battle. One woman told me she was glad younger women were getting involved. "I've been fighting this since the sixties," she said. "And I'm tired."
One woman recounted her experience at a very conservative Christian college and her formerly pro-life beliefs, challenged by a marriage to an abusive husband and the subsequent pregnancy. "And then I stood there, looking in the mirror, at the bruises all over my body… and I didn't know what to do." And so she was here, as were we all, to show her extreme opposition.
During the testimony, which lasted hours, committee members would leave to go to the restroom, or another meeting, or text, or stare off into space. Except for Rep. Jessica Farrar, who was a stalwart ally, they seemed disinterested at best. At midnight, the chair, Rep. Byron Cook took to the mic. He gave insincere thanks for our efforts and then said, "But this testimony is getting repetitive."
Quick tip for the next time you find yourself in this situation: if you want to piss off a room full of women during an abortion bill committee meeting say, "This testimony has gotten repetitive; we're going to cut it short."
Needless to say, the people were not pleased. Jessica Farrar, that lovely goddess, pled our case: "These women are sharing their personal stories. I fail to see how that could constitute being repetitive," drawing a cheer from the still-spirited crowd. Cook, surely frustrated, simply left the room. Eventually he came back and agreed to take two more hours of testimony, shutting it down around three in the morning with dozens of women still waiting to testify.
On Sunday the debate moved to the House floor, and provided some moments that, were they not so terrifying, would have been hilarious, most notably the assurance of the bills' author, Rep. Jodie Laubenberg, that exceptions for rape weren't necessary because rape kits were administered which would terminate any resulting pregnancy. In a brilliant move, Rep. Dawnna Dukes asked her to repeat her answer, which became instant fodder for bloggers and late night talk show hosts everywhere:
"In the emergency room they have what's called rape kits, where a woman can get cleaned out."
The bills passed the Republican-led House, without any amendments added (which included exceptions for rape and incest, a later implementation date, exceptions for rural women, and others). During the debate, representatives were sleeping, or texting, or poking each other with yardsticks, or, most notable, laughing loudly on their cell phones.
The bills moved to the Senate in the form of Senate Bill 5, to be heard on Tuesday. Thus the orange-clad crowd packing the gallery on a hot, sunny morning.
Senator Wendy Davis had announced her intent to filibuster the bill, and stepped into the chamber to raucous applause from the gallery, which was immediately shushed. We knew that they were looking for any excuse to throw us out.
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She began her filibuster at 11:18 in the morning by reading the testimony of women who were denied the chance to testify Thursday night by Byron Cook. She read letters to the legislature from the Texas Medical Association and the Texas Association of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, decrying the bills because of the effect they will have on women across the state: letters that stated no matter one's stance on abortion, the results of these bills would be disastrous for poor and rural women.
At one point she yielded to questions from Sen. Bob Deuell, one of the authors of the bill. "I maintain my view that this bill is about protecting Texas women, not denying women access to abortion services," he said.
I could not tell if he was either a skilled liar or woefully obtuse. The lieutenant governor himself said the bills were about restricting abortion. The bills make no sense from a medical perspective, which Deuell should know, being a doctor (but not, as Sen. Davis pointed out, an OB/GYN). His argument was not supported when, immediately after he sat down, Sen. Eddie Lucio, a democrat for the bills, stood up and passionately remonstrated his heartbreak for the "babies. I just think of the babies" (again, there was no evidence whatsoever that enacting this legislation would reduce the number of abortions carried out in the state of Texas; rather, the number might go up with the dismantling of family planning services around the state).
And then came the strikes. Per Texas parliamentary procedure, a filibustering Senator must yield the floor if he (or she) sustains three points of order against him (or her). The first point of order came on the issue of "germaneness," a word soon to enter the lexicon of everyone stymied by Texas legislative procedure. Senator Davis was talking about funding for Planned Parenthood, which by the logic of David Dewhurst, wasn't deemed "germane" to the topic of bills related to abortion and family planning services. First point of order: sustained, to the chagrin of the still-silent protestors above (we had been interrupted once, and only once, during the proceedings: by a man who started shouting "Abortion is genocide! End all abortions now!" and was promptly removed by authorities). The second point of order, brought forth by Rep. Tommy Williams, a thundering man in tennis shoes who looked as though any effort requiring more than 10 seconds of maintained physical exertion would give him a heart attack, was sustained shortly later. Wendy Davis had received assistance from another Senator (Rodney Ellis, who was both hilarious and on point throughout the proceedings) with strapping a back brace. Again, the crowd remained silent.
And then, about two hours until the end of the session, came the third point of order, from Sen. Donna Campbell, a staunchly religious proponent of the bill. Davis had been talking about the sonogram bill, passed during an earlier legislative session. Campbell argued that talking about a previous abortion bill was not "germane" to the current pending abortion bills. Suddenly the gallery was full of state troopers; they were expecting trouble. Dewhurst agreed with Campbell's motion, and the third point of order was sustained after a lengthy debate.
By this time thousands of protestors, clad in orange, had filled the rotunda and spilled out onto the Capitol lawn. At this news they began shouting (we in the gallery were still silent; after a brief eruption of chanting "Let her speak!" the state troopers were brought in and we fell, once again, silent). Immediately other Senators began bringing forth parliamentary inquiries to further stall the vote. It was around 10:15, and their questions and debates over the rules (and order of inquiries) took us all the way to 11:45, when the new president, Robert Duncan, tried to call roll for a vote, effectively ignoring Sen. Leticia van de Putte, who had raised an objection. After the vote, a frustrated yet lovely van de Putte asked, "Did the President not hear me or did the President hear me and refuse to recognize me?" And then, the question that launched a thousand voices: her small, clear voice resonating through the chamber, and through the hearts of thousands of Texan women: "At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues in the room?"
And then the women of Texas made their voices heard. We started clapping, and then we started cheering, and then we started shouting. And we got louder. And we didn't stop. Messages started popping up: "don't stop shouting! We can hear you on the live feed!" (at this point close to 200 thousand people were watching online, the session having been ignored by major news networks, including CNN, who was airing a piece on muffins). The shouting grew, from the gallery and the rotunda and from all across Texas, from women who were listening, and from women who were tired. And our voices rose, and chaos ensued below. And the clock struck midnight, and still we cheered.
About the time the back doors opened and state trooper after state trooper filed silently in the gallery to clear us out, sometime immediately after midnight, Duncan was furiously trying to gather the senators around him to call a vote. "It's too late!" we shouted. Wendy Davis, still standing, that marvelous beacon of grace, had her hand raised with a peace sign, signifying her "no" vote, surrounded by the senators who had fought alongside her for 13 agonizing hours: Royce West of Dallas, Rodney Ellis of Houston, Kirk Watson of Austin. And still the people cheered, despite the large and foreboding troopers ushering us out, tiredly and without enthusiasm.
We had done it. We had failed the bill, despite the best efforts of legislators using underhanded tactics to achieve its passage. We were kicked out, but we were enthusiastic. We had fought, and we had won.
And then, on Facebook, a friend posted that the AP had reported that the bill had passed. This was obviously inaccurate. We had been there, we had seen it, hundreds of thousands of people watching had seen it. The Senate website had posted that the vote had occurred on June 26, after midnight. And still, major news networks (after their muffin exposès) were reporting that the bill had passed.
And, mysteriously, the Senate website changed to say the vote had happened on June 25- before midnight.
David Dewhurst was actually trying to pretend that the vote had taken place before midnight. It took 3 hours, and the sharp eyes of the Internet, to show him that he could not pull the wool over our eyes. The bill was dead. And Wendy Davis emerged from the chamber, still standing, triumphant but tired, surrounded by troopers. I ran up to hug her, saying in her ear, "You were amazing, you were amazing. Thank you so much." She thanked me, her voice practically gone. She had become an overnight star in Texas politics, and rightly so. She had been a class act for 15 hours. I hope that she got some fuzzy slippers and a stiff drink that night.
The governor's office responded to the killing of the bill. We were called "terrorist" (sic). An "unruly mob." We had disrupted the democratic process. I had never felt more proud. The inalterable fact was that those pushing the bill had done so despite the objections from women all over the state, from their constituents, from medical organizations, from science, and reason, and fact. And once they had lost, they still tried to say it had passed by altering state documents, faking the time the vote had taken place. And they had the nerve to call us opponents of democracy.
The next day Governor Perry called a second special session. "The citizens of our state have made crystal clear their priorities for our great state. Texans value life and want to protect women and the unborn." It begins on July 1. And I urge you, if you stand with Wendy, if you stand with Texas women, if you stand against restricting access to healthcare for women already in dire need of it, to contact your state representatives and let them know what you're standing for. We are all standing.
http://www.senate.state.tx.us/75r/Senate/Members.htm
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