I don’t know the specifics, but Texas apparently wants to be more restrictive than Indiana on allowing women access to abortion services. They had a bill ready to go in a special session that was set to end at midnight last night. The Texas Senate just barely missed the deadline due, mostly, to a filibuster by state Senator Wendy Davis.
Through procedural methods probably most of them don’t even fully understand, Davis’ filibuster was broken – but that required a lengthy, time consuming debate about the procedure now that it was broken. Then, in the final minutes, when the Senate was scrambling to get a vote in under the wire, protestors made enough noise to confuse the issue enough for the clock to run out. This bit caught my eye, and I’d be interested in the details:
Initially, Republicans insisted the vote started before the midnight deadline and passed the bill that Democrats spent the day trying to kill. But after official computer records and printouts of the voting record showed the vote took place Wednesday, and then were changed to read Tuesday, senators retreated into a private meeting to reach a conclusion.
I obviously don’t know squat about the Texas legislative computer system, so maybe that doesn’t mean something nefarious happened; but it looks awfully sketchy.
The victory for the Democrats, such as it is, is probably mostly symbolic. The Governor is being encouraged to call another special session, and this isn’t the kind of trick that works a second time.
Why does the Texas GOP have so little regard for the sanctity of human life that they’re willing to go to such extreme and, frankly, dishonest measures, in order to give a parasite priority over a person?
Apparently, the Texas legislature has never been above changing the clock when it suits them. After all, what is time but an artificial construct anyway?