Republicans in the Texas state Senate are on guard against opposition and ready to push their bill sharply limiting abortion access through to a final vote, likely Friday. A Senate committee passed the bill, which includes a total ban on abortion after 20 weeks and requires abortion providers to meet standards for ambulatory surgical centers, on Thursday after the state House passed it Wednesday.
Though there's too much time left in the special session for a filibuster to likely work, Republicans are taking precautions against protest:
Hundreds of activists are expected to visit the Capitol tomorrow, prompting [Lt. Gov. David] Dewhurst to warn that he’d clear the visitor gallery if the crowd gets rowdy. Around midnight on June 25 opponents of the bill screamed so loud that Republicans couldn’t pass the bill before the end of an earlier legislative session. The demonstration helped turn state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Fort Worth Democrat, into a national media star after her 11-hour filibuster slowed the bill’s progress.
“We aren’t going to be interrupted in doing the people’s work by an unruly mob,” Dewhurst said.
Actually, the people of Texas
think the state already restricts abortion enough and would rather see state government focusing on jobs and the economy. But Republican primary voters and not the population of Texas as a whole are the real audience for Dewhurst, Gov. Rick Perry, and many of the ambitious Republicans in the state legislature.
It doesn't have to be this way. Draft Wendy Davis for governor.