Liz Goodwin of Yahoo! News has a new piece about Wendy Davis. Here’s an excerpt:
Texas State Senator Wendy Davis became a national political star by standing up for abortion rights last summer — and conservative Texans in the anti-abortion movement say they won’t let her forget it.
The 50-year-old Fort Worth lawyer blocked a bill that banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy in a dramatic, 11-hour filibuster at the State Capitol that attracted national attention and the adulation of abortion rights’ advocates last June. Despite Davis’ pink-sneakered filibuster, the bill eventually passed and was signed into law by outgoing Gov. Rick Perry. (The law shaves off four weeks from the amount of time a woman can legally access an abortion and may result in the closure of a third of Texas’ abortion clinics because it requires providers to have admitting privileges as a nearby hospital.)
The story goes on to quote antiabortion activists as saying, “We will spend as much as we can raise,” said Elizabeth Graham, president of Texas Right to Life, another anti-abortion group in the state. “They are running radio ads in English and Spanish calling Davis an ‘abortion zealot,’ who ‘believes terminating babies even halfway through pregnancy is OK,’” Goodwin writes.
I would simply make the point that Americans are deeply divided on the abortion issue, and it is no sure thing that the pro-choice or pro-life movement has the upper hand. Here’s Gallup poll from May on the issue:
When asked how they think most Americans feel about the abortion issue, 51% of U.S. adults say the public is mostly “pro-choice,” while 35% say “pro-life.” This general perception that the pro-choice viewpoint prevails contrasts with the nearly even division of Americans’ actual views. The same poll finds that 48% of Americans call themselves pro-life and 45% pro-choice.
This sounds about right to me: The actual division between pro-choice and pro-life is “extremely close.”
AP Photo | LM Otero
