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| Sen. Davis' shoes. |
Writing at the NY Times, Gail Collins pays appropriate
tribute to the filibustering of Texas State Senator Wendy Davis:
There is an old saying that Texas is “heaven for men and
dogs, but hell for women and oxen.” But the state’s history is chock-full of
stories of female role models. Barbara Jordan. Ann Richards. In downtown
Austin, there’s a statue of Angelina Eberly, heroine of the Texas Archives War
of 1842, firing a cannon and looking about 7 feet tall.
“It was like a made-for-TV movie. I’ve been around the
block, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Cecile Richards, the
president of Planned Parenthood and the daughter of the former governor.
Texas is a state with one of the nation’s highest teenage
motherhood rates, where a majority of women who give birth are poor enough to
qualify for Medicaid. So, naturally, its political leaders have declared war
against the right of women to choose whether or not they want to be pregnant.
Funding for family planning has been slashed. This month, Gov. Rick Perry tried
to pass a new law that would have shut down almost all the abortion clinics in
the state, under the guise of expanded health and safety requirements.
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