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| Wendy Davis speaks to supporters. Lisa Krantz/AP via Houston Chronnicle |
Wendy Davis, in her new memoir,
openly discusses an abortion she had for medical reasons:
Davis, in a copy of the book obtained by the Express-News,
wrote that her unborn, already loved third daughter had an acute brain abnormality.
She said doctors told her the syndrome would cause the baby to suffer and was
likely incompatible with life.
After getting several medical opinions and feeling the baby
they had named Tate Elise
“tremble violently, as if someone were applying an electric shock to her” in
the womb, she said the decision was clear. “She was suffering,” Davis wrote.
She has discussed more a previous termination of an ectopic pregnancy that would have threatened her own life, but talked little about this.
That said, on the political front, since officially announcing her run for governor last December, Davis has been pretty gun-shy to talk about issues of reproductive choice in general, even though it was a filibuster over a draconian new law — a law that would have prevented the abortion she had — that propelled her to the statewide limelight just over a year ago.
So, is she prepared to take the bit in the teeth more? Or, is she going to continue to think she can successfully chase after GOP-leaning suburban white women by continuing to soft-pedal this issue?
Given that she hadn't talked that much about this abortion before now, I don't see how she can continue to soft-pedal the issue. Greg Abbott's minions are going to double down on the "Abortion Barbie" slurs.
Yes, Abbott himself is playing it polite for public consumption:
"The unspeakable pain of losing a child is beyond
tragic for any parent. As a father, I grieve for the Davis family and for the
loss of life."
Call me back when the wingnuts go on the attack, to see if he disavows them.
And will those wingnuts try to claim she's not that religious, despite saying she baptized the ... fetus? dead baby? What do we call it? Again, those suburban GOP-leaning white women aren't going to be any more likely to vote for her today than they were yesterday.
As for "what do we call it"? I'm with Ted Rall on this, and have been ever since I read his take, which is in this blog post about the "Gordian knot" of the issue:
Abortion is murder. In my view women have — and ought to
continue to have — the right to murder their unborn babies. Each abortion is a
tragedy, some necessary and others not, and all of them are murder.
I can't say it any differently, although I might want to put it less bluntly. And, Wendy Davis couldn't either.
And, Rall's bluntness shows how this is indeed a "Gordian knot," and why outsiders, especially pre-viability, have no business judging the women cutting the knot, nor any business restricting their ability to do so.
At the same time, as I've blogged before, if you believe in an invisible man upstairs, especially an omnipotent one whose allegedly an Intelligent Designer, then you have to believe this guy is also the Great Abortionist, because as many as 1/3 of human pregnancies abort, for genetic abnormalities and other severe medical reasons.
Therefore, wingnuts? If you accuse the modern world of "playing God" with abortion, you're exactly right.
The book goes on public sale on Tuesday. Stay tuned for more takes on it.
As a secularist, and one with a European-type semi-cynical take on life, I'm not on board with this from the book:
I’ve long believed in angels on earth, in a higher power, in moments
when someone or something comes into your life out of the blue and saves
you from the dangerous path you’re on.
Not me.
Because, elementary logic, Wendy Davis.
Why didn't that higher power prevent this fetus/baby from having the brain defects in the first place? Why didn't it prevent the ectopic pregnancy before that?
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