A Republican state senator in Texas broke a glass tabletop Wednesday during a hearing on three anti-abortion bills, hitting his gavel so hard during a NARAL Pro-Choice Texas intern’s testimony that the room was stunned into silence as the glass shattered.

The 24-year-old intern, Maggie Hennessy, was wrapping up her two-minute testimony against SB 415 — a bill that would limit doctors’ ability to perform the dilation and evacuation medical procedure, which is used in about 95 percent of second-trimester abortions — when Senator Charles Schwertner verbally warned her that her time was up. As Hennessy concluded her testimony — surpassing the time limit by several seconds to urge lawmakers to “stop playing with women’s health care as if it’s your own political puppet” — Schwertner hammered his gavel prompting a swift crack that shattered the desk top and echoed through the senate chamber.

NARAL Texas communications director Alexa Garcia-Ditta was watching from the gallery and took the following photo of the damage:

Alexa Garcia-Ditta

Alexa Garcia-Ditta

A few minutes later, Schwertner allowed the president of the anti-abortion Texas Alliance for Life lobby group to extend his testimony, including a quote attributed to Catholic saint and scholar Thomas More, for the same length of time as Hennessy’s, without an interruption. Schwertner is the chair of the Texas Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

Dozens of Texans gathered at the capitol for the hearing, which lasted more than five hours. But Schwertner’s aggressive gaveling appeared to be limited to Hennessy’s testimony. When others' statements went over time, the senator instead warned them by repeatedly thanking them for their testimony.

It was Hennessy’s first time appearing in front of the Texas Legislature. She said she found the senator’s reaction to her witness statement “very shocking.”

“I don’t know why he banged [the gavel] so aggressively,” she said. “He just clearly was rattled by it.”

A representative from the senator’s office told Cosmopolitan.com that Schwertner hit the glass table inadvertently. According to Schwertner’s chief of staff, the senator was trying “to run an orderly meeting,” and, “the reality is he’s got a little gavel block, and he hit the glass instead of hitting the sounder.”

Schwertner, an orthopedic surgeon who has served in the Texas Senate since 2012, has carried a number of anti-abortion bills in the Legislature, including an early version of part of the state’s omnibus anti-abortion bill that was struck down by the Supreme Court last year.

Hennessy, who is studying for her master’s in public health degree at the University of Texas, said that Schwertner’s gavel-slam doesn’t discourage her. “I’m not scared by it,” she said. “It encourages me to keep fighting this good fight.”

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