Texas Lawmaker Wendy Davis is the Queen of Everything

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about Texas Democratic Senator Wendy Davis, the bad ass woman who filibustered the state’s incredibly harmful, ridiculously terrible abortion bill that was thisclose to being signed into law, effectively shutting down nearly every abortion clinic within it.

Wendy started her filibuster at 11am on Tuesday morning, sharing with her fellow constituents stories sent in from people around the country – women who had undergone an abortion along with thousands of men and women who support a woman’s right to choose – for over 13 hours. That’s right, Wendy Davis talked about abortion and how harmful a law severely limiting it would be for women for a full 13 hours. She didn’t take a break. She did not sit down, she did not have lunch or use the bathroom – she just talked and talked and made the voices of thousands of women across America heard. And it worked.

Texas’s anti-abortion law would place regulations on equipment and admission procedures that would make it all but impossible for doctors and clinics providing the service to stay open. While the motion was aimed at abortions performed on women beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy, anyone who is pro-choice knows that the law would affect us all. And so, Wendy Davis went to work for the people of Texas – and symbolically, for people of America – to share our voices, to make us heard and to ultimately affect change. Anyone who says it’s impossible to make a difference need look no further than Senator Davis to see that’s totally and completely false.

While drama broke out on the Senate floor at roughly 10pm local time – around the time when Davis discussed Planned Parenthood and had a colleague help her with a back brace – even the most underhanded of her Republican counterparts were unsuccessful in their methods to quiet her. This time, justice prevailed and Wendy Davis effectively shut down a bill with the sheer power of words (at least for the time being). For that, we salute her.

Featured image via The New Yorker