A star is born. Texas Democrat single-handedly stops draconian anti-abortion bill.

Courtesy of the New York Times: 

Hours after claiming that they successfully passed some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, Republican lawmakers reversed course on Wednesday and said a disputed late-night vote on the bill did not follow legislative procedures, rendering the vote moot and giving Democrats a bitterly fought if short-lived victory. 

The reversal capped a remarkable day in the Texas Legislature here. A petite Fort Worth Democrat in pink sneakers staged a 10-hour-plus filibuster marathon in which she never sat down. Abortion rights activists succeeded in disrupting Republican senators, and the fate of a bill that Gov. Rick Perry had made a priority devolved into a legislative mess so thick that even senators who had voted on the bill could not say for certain whether they had indeed voted on the bill. 

The state Senate’s vote came right at a midnight Tuesday deadline, amid widespread confusion the noise of a chanting crowd of the bill’s opponents in an upstairs gallery. Senate Democrats said the vote took place past the deadline at 12:02 a.m. or 12:03 a.m., while Republicans disputed those claims, saying the vote was legitimate. 

But at 3 a.m., Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the presiding officer of the Senate and a Republican supporter of the bill, told lawmakers and reporters that although the bill passed on a 19-to-10 vote, the bill could not be signed in the presence of the Senate and was therefore dead, blaming “an unruly mob using Occupy Wall Street tactics” as the primary cause. 

The reversal served as an embarassing episode for Mr. Dewhurst and Republican senators on a divisive bill that was closely watched around the nation, both by anti-abortion activists and supporters of abortion rights. 

“The G.O.P. Senate leadership comes out of this whole process looking somewhat disingenuous, deceptive and disorganized,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. 

In the final minutes before the midnight deadline, Republican senators had interrupted a filibuster that began at 11 a.m. But their attempts to push forward with a vote on the bill caused the bill’s opponents in the gallery to erupt into screams and cheers. Attempts to bring about order failed.

Beating an anti-abortion bill in Texas is no mean feat, and Senator Davis is a hero to both men and women in that state.

Chalk one up for the good guys! Especially since by doing this Davis also clearly exposed the underhanded methods that Texas Republicans are willing to use in order to take women's rights over their own bodies away from them.

I am going to keep a close eye on Senator Davis I see very big things for her future.