Standing with Wendy.

I planned to go to bed early tonight, but I made the mistake of tuning in to the online live stream of the Texas Senate's special session. State Senator Wendy Davis (D-TX, Fort Worth) was filibustering Senate Bill 5, a piece of anti-abortion legislation that would inevitably be passed by the Republican majority if put to a vote. SB 5 proposes to prohibit late-stage abortions under criminal penalties and effectively reduce the number of health clinics performing abortions in Texas from 42 to just 5 by imposing new requirements forcing clinics to undergo certification as "ambulatory surgical centers" and mandating that clinic doctors have admitting privileges at local hospitals -- conditions that, in their absence, have never before interfered with clinics' ability to perform safe, necessary medical procedures. In order to avoid giving Republicans the chance to pass the bill, Senator Davis announced her intention to filibuster, i.e. to remain on the floor discussing the bill for the 13 hours remaining until midnight, when the special session would be required to close without having had the chance to vote. Because the Texas Senate only convenes once every two years, with the exception of governor-mandated special sessions like this one, the legislation would have been tabled until 2015.

AP/Eric Gay

I'd been watching parts of Senator Davis's remarkable performance on and off throughout the day, as she read to a predominantly-male Senate a series of testimonies by Texas women who'd had firsthand experience needing abortion services. Not being allowed to sit, lean, eat, drink, use the bathroom, or otherwise move from an upright standing position during the filibuster, Senator Davis wore comfortable neon-pink running shoes for her very lengthy speaking engagement. She was holding up well, until the third time a Senator called for a Point of Order due to to Senator Davis allegedly breaking the filibuster rules. The first time was for introducing a topic that was not "germane," which is to say relevant, to the discussion of the abortion bill; the second was because she received physical assistance from another senator handing her a back brace midway through her lengthy standing session; the third and final interruption was again a claim that discussing Texas's newly passed ultrasound law was somehow off-topic when discussing abortion. I didn't witness the first two objections, but the third is definitively nonsense: by no stretch of the imagination are ultrasounds -- which Texas now requires for all women undergoing abortions -- NOT related to the bill at hand.

In short, with about two hours remaining on the clock for Senator Davis's filibuster, the remaining time was filled with an almost comically confused back-and-forth between senators about parliamentary procedure, like first-graders arguing over whose turn it is to play with the toy truck, or a particularly inept rendition of Who's On First. The Democratic minority senators backed her up, with Senators Leticia Van de Putte and Kirk Watson in particular providing robust appeals of the appeals to the filibuster (it got complicated). Senator Van de Putte, having been overlooked in earlier parliamentary proceedings, triggered the night's final push with only ten minutes left to midnight when she directly addressed the President of the Senate to ask, "At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues?” The thousands of citizens watching and listening from the balcony erupted, and the cheering drowned out any attempts at legislation until midnight had safely passed.

The sinister twist to the story is what happened next: the Senators huddled -- literally huddled, in a small mob of suits and thinning hair -- and took a vote anyway, two minutes past their deadline. They claim to have passed SB 5 with a vote of 17-12 in favor, but the midnight deadline is non-negotiable, and that verdict is therefore illegal. No one is sure what happens now, but the thousands of protestors remain in and around the Texas Senate building awaiting confirmation either way. Department of Public Safety officers are handcuffing and forcibly removing them one by one, but the pro-choice supporters are stubborn, and they're there in droves.

I live-tweeted the situation, naturally. If anyone's interested, I'm trying out Storify for the first time to compile my take on the events as they happened:



[Update] Fast-forward to now. It's 3:30 a.m., and by the time anyone reads this, the cat will be out of the bag: SB 5 IS DEAD. Thank you, Wendy Davis; thank you, Leticia Van de Putte; thank you, Kirk Watson; thank you, Democratic senators whose names I didn't catch, women and men both. Thank you to all the avid Twitter users who kept the rest of the country informed while every single major news network slept. Huge shoutout to The Texas Tribune, whose live stream and live blog proved that local news isn't dead, and that we need it more than ever.

Nick Swartsell, via Texas Observer

I've never had an abortion, and I don't have any immediate plans to need one -- but then again, no one ever does. I'm also not a Texan, and definitely never intend to become one. Nevertheless, this was a personal victory for me, as it was for every single person in the country who may one day have to resort to this kind of reproductive care, and I'm glad I stayed awake to see it happen.