Former Texas State Senator Wendy Davis on the New Abortion Law: “Fight Like Hell”

The Texas anti-abortion law that went into effect on September 1 is the most restrictive in the United States, banning abortion at about the six-week mark, a time when most people are not aware that they might be pregnant, and providing no exemptions in cases of rape or incest. Furthermore, the law creates a kind of vigilante system, allowing lawsuits to be filed by private citizens against anyone who performs abortions or assists anyone in seeking an abortion, and provides awards of at least $10,000.

As the realities of this law were revealed, many women grew more devastated and frightened. Among these women is former Democratic Texas State Senator Wendy Davis, who served in the Senate from 2009 to 2015. Davis is best known for her 11-hour filibuster in June 2013, when she wore bright pink sneakers so she could stand in order to delay the passage of a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks and require abortion clinics to meet hospital-style standards. Not stopping to drink, eat, sit to rest her feet and knees, or even use the bathroom, Davis succeeded in delaying the vote.

Since her famous filibuster, Davis unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2014 and for Congress in 2019. In May 2016, Davis launched the nonprofit Deeds Not Words, which focuses on developing leadership and promoting activism on behalf of women's rights in Texas.

Wendy Davis spoke to the Women’s Media Center about how the anti-abortion law affects women, especially women of color and low-income women, how women can fight for their right to choose, and how this right cannot be taken for granted. (This interview has been condensed and lightly edited.)

What has been your reaction to Texas’ anti-abortion bill?
Anguish, fear, and anger kind of all mixed together.

Did you expect this law to pass?
I expected it would pass because I know this legislature all too well, and unfortunately, we don’t have the number of Democrats needed to block things like this. What I was deeply shocked and saddened and angry about was the U.S. Supreme Court’s failure to block the implementation of this law, particularly because this is the first time since Roe v. Wade that some court in the federal system has failed to block the implementation of a law that’s clearly not in keeping with Roe and that has such an extreme impact on abortion access. In fact, the law that I filibustered in 2013, though we successfully killed it during that particular special session because of the filibuster, we were called back to a second special session, the law did pass, and we spent the next three years litigating it, ultimately with the U.S. Supreme Court overturning it. But in the interim, the federal circuit blocked a significant portion of the law from going into effect, so we did lose half of our abortion clinics, but we were threatened with losing almost every one of them if the law had been allowed to go into effect while we litigated the constitutionality. That means it would’ve been essentially a three-year period with extremely limited access to abortion care in Texas.

And that’s what I’m so concerned about right now, that this circuit was supposed to hear this case a few days before it was supposed to take effect. There was a hearing scheduled, everyone was prepared to go and obviously argue whether this law could meet the constitutionality requirements it should be expected to meet, and this circuit canceled that hearing unexpectedly, and without any information about why. That’s what left the supporters of abortion rights in Texas scrambling, with the last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the 5-4 majority made a decision not to hear [the case], and also not to ban the implementation in the interim. To say it was very unusual is an understatement. It was unparalleled that they wouldn’t provide some kind of injunctive relief against such a clearly unconstitutional law.

How concerned are you about legislatures around the country restricting abortion? Republicans in six other U.S. states are looking to introduce anti-abortion measures similar to Texas’ six-week ban.
I’m terribly concerned, and I think it’s primarily taking root in Southern states. If the federal courts don’t do something about it, or if Congress doesn’t pass some protection of abortion rights, it won’t be long before we have a situation of essentially government-mandated pregnancies in the South. And there’s those other states, [South Dakota Governor] Kristi Noem and some others, who are trying to position themselves for the possibility of running for president, and they are talking about it too. I want to be clear: That is what is motivating to restricting abortion access. There are very few who sincerely believe that pregnant people should lose this right. What they do sincerely care about are their own political futures and how they can fare in a Republican primary.

The Southern states are sort of the only game in town because [Republicans have] had control of how districts are drawn for such a long time now, the general elections really don’t matter in terms of threatening their viability and their ability to advance their political futures. Instead, they focus strictly on a very small minority of voters who occupy the far-right fringes of Republican primary voters. And so, the vast majority of citizens in our state and others, who disagree with these laws, are being forced to have the perspective and desires of a small minority of voters, and their values, thrust upon us. It is such an indescribable situation that we have a pervasive minority rule that has begun to take root across this country.

What should we do to fight back?
Vote, vote, vote. My hope is that this law in Texas is an awakening. I think a lot of people who have the potential to become pregnant, even though we’ve known there is a creeping intrusion on that right, have taken granted the belief that it will always exist; that attempts to destroy it will fail. So, for the last few years, there’s been a great impact on people of color, on women of low income, and many other people haven’t really felt the impact of what some of these restrictions have brought. But now, this ban in Texas applies to everyone equally.

Now of course, there will always be a group of privileged people who have the capacity to put themselves, their daughters, their other loved ones on a plane and fly them to Colorado, California, or New York, to receive the care that they deserve. So, there’s still going to be this system of discriminatory impact on a certain segment of our population. At the very least, my hope is that the overreach that Texas just undertook will be a wakeup call for a lot of people who thought that this right was always going to be there for them.

And there will be a response at the ballot box for them. People who favor restricting abortion have long been motivated to vote because of that belief. People who favor keeping the protections of Roe, some of us vote with that issue at the forefront of our hearts and minds. But for many of us, we’ve taken it for granted that it isn’t really threatened and we haven’t used it as a motivating reason for how or why we vote.

How do we ensure access to reproductive health as these restrictions increase nationwide?
On the legal front, pushing this question through the federal system and ultimately getting a determination from the U.S. Supreme Court is incredibly important. Many people predict that Roe will be dead after the Supreme Court hears the case of the Mississippi 15-week abortion ban when they reconvene in October. I think that it’s likely that some skeleton of Roe will be preserved because I think there are members of the court who want to overturn Roe but they understand what the political ramifications would be. I think they’re going to try to do something that has it both ways, that sort of keeps Roe propped up as a skeleton law, in the appearance that it’s there to protect us. But these pernicious half-approaches state by state are having a tremendous impact on people of color and people of low income, [preventing them] from accessing the reproductive care that they need. I think that devastating consequences are going to be assured no matter what.

I would love to believe that we have the capacity to vote in a way that puts the interests of others equal to our own. I know, for example, that were there someone in the universe of people that I love who was in need of abortion care, I can help them find it. I know that. But it is so deeply important to me, and I’ve been thinking about this every day, the people that don’t have the privilege, that have nowhere to turn, they are who I’m voting with. As we exercise the power and privilege of our vote, [I hope] that we would do it with empathy and understanding, for the lived experience of other people and our desire to lift up the whole.

What is also concerning about this bill is the vigilantism that is allowed. What can Texans and other women in the United States do to protect each other?
Right now, there are a number of organizations that are working to make sure that women can leave our state to access the care that they need. These are abortion funds that raise money specifically for abortion access. There are others of us working on a simultaneous and equally important front, and this is something that I’m working with in the nonprofit that I founded, Deeds Not Words — we are raising a legal defense fund for the lawsuits that will no doubt come for the workers of the front line providing abortion care, so they won’t be financially at risk from one of these vigilante suits. So, it’s sort of making sure that people can still get abortion care elsewhere, but then also protecting the ability to get abortion care here by identifying the financial risk that clinical workers will be exposed to if they provided that care.

What else can be done to protect one another against other extremist measures around the country?
Communicating. Talk to each other. Raise awareness. I live in this world and it just feels so vivid and urgent to me, but I don’t take for granted that a lot of people don’t spend as much waking time and energy on this issue as someone like me might. And I think we can’t underestimate the importance of talking to each other about exactly what is happening, and why it matters.

As part of my filibuster that day, I read hundreds of letters; we received over 1,600 stories that people shared with us about their abortion experiences and why they chose abortion. Sharing our stories, de-stigmatizing the health care that is abortion care, is really an important part of helping to break through some of the misconceptions and barriers that keep the alliances from forming. The radical right, the evangelical movement, would like for people to believe that Democrats and abortion activists are fighting to dramatically expand abortion, that people who support abortion believe that we should be able to abort all the way up to birth. This is absurd and offensive and unfortunately deeply confusing for people who believe that most instances of abortion should be OK. Communicating the fact that Roe v. Wade has already set viability at 22–24 weeks, that less than 1% of abortions in this country are performed beyond that, and that those are [cases] of fetal abnormalities or when the life of the woman [is in danger]. We need to do a better job of helping people see this, because I am sometimes surprised to learn that even people who are friendly to abortion rights and maintaining Roe have some misunderstandings of what the goals of the abortion movement are. The abortion movement wants Roeto be left alone. They want women to have equal access to care that all of us should have, and they want financial barriers to be removed so we don’t have constitutional rights that protect some of us, but not all of us. Those are really the goals. Of course, this disproportionate racial and economic impact is currently felt today even with Roestill in place.

And the other thing, and this is personally important to me, is that we give people who can become pregnant as much support as we possibly can to prevent unplanned pregnancy. Colorado has been a real example of how we do this. Colorado has widely expanded, at state cost, access to IUDs. Many people have chosen this option. The last that I have looked at this, it was widely popular and it significantly reduced abortion in their state. And I want to be careful when I talk about this because I don’t ever want to leave the impression that abortion should be stigmatized and abortion is bad. But I do think it is a mutual goal that we allow people who can become pregnant to control their own reproductive destinies, and a hugely important part of that is preventing unplanned pregnancies.

Is there hope? What can we do to maintain hope and not give up?
Fight like hell. Fighting brings hope. I tell the young women I work with all the time that we can allow ourselves to be disappointed, but we cannot get discouraged. We cannot give in to discouragement. And I have to tell you, on September 1, when the Supreme Court issued their decision not to enjoin the Texas law while its constitutionality was being challenged, I think I was as low as I ever got when it comes to fighting for causes that I care about. I had to really push hard through that, and I know that a lot of people are feeling that way. But I also know that if we cannot grab hold of the thread of hope, the shared universe of fighters that we are part of, if we give up, then we have surely lost. But as long as we keep fighting, we have hope. And I’m going to keep fighting, and I know so, so many people are as well.