Davis discloses terminating pregnancy in her memoir

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AUSTIN - Sen. Wendy Davis, in her memoir due out next week, discloses the most personal of stories preceding her nationally marked fight against tighter abortion restrictions: a decision she and her then-husband made 17 years ago to end a much-wanted pregnancy.

The book, “Forgetting to Be Afraid,” goes on sale to the general public Tuesday. Copies will be available Monday at a Fort Worth book signing by Davis, the Democratic nominee for governor against Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Davis, in a copy of the book obtained by the San Antonio Express-News, wrote that her unborn third daughter had an acute brain abnormality. She said doctors told her the syndrome would cause the baby to suffer and likely was 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.

The unborn baby's heart was “quieted” by her doctor, and their baby was gone. She was delivered by cesarean section in spring 1997, the memoir says.

Davis wrote that she and her then-husband, Jeff, spent time with Tate the next day and had her baptized. They cried, took photographs and said their good-byes, she wrote, and Tate's lifeless body was taken away the following day.

“An indescribable blackness followed. It was a deep, dark despair and grief, a heavy wave that crushed me, that made me wonder if I would ever surface. ... And when I finally did come through it, I emerged a different person. Changed. Forever changed,” Davis wrote.

The 304-page hardcover is priced at $27.97 from Blue Rider Press, and imprint of the Penguin Group.

The book's title comes from a Lady Bird Johnson quote: “Become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid.”

Abortion rights have been a major undercurrent in the race for governor between the Fort Worth Democrat and Abbott, a staunch abortion opponent. He has indicated he opposes the procedure even for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest, saying, “We shouldn't discriminate against a child.”

The Abbott campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Her memoir is being published as she trails in the polls behind Abbott, who is favored at a time when Democrats haven't elected anyone to statewide office in two decades.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones said he doesn't expect the revelation to lose any votes for Davis, since he said it's a relative small proportion of voters who oppose abortion in cases of severe fetal abnormality.

“The group that will be most bothered by her having an abortion of a baby with a severe fetal abnormality is a group that wasn't going to vote for her anyway,” he said.

“The positive side of it for her is it humanizes her, and also makes it a little tricky for opponents to attack her on the abortion issue because now, it not only is a political issue for her, but it's a personal issue,” Jones said.

Davis launched her campaign last year after rising to national prominence with her fight against tighter abortion restrictions through a filibuster in which she shared women's personal stories.

Her pregnancy with Tate hasn't come up in the race, although she wrote that she considered talking about it during the filibuster when she read the story of a woman that was wrenchingly close to her own.

That woman said the legislation's ban on abortion at 20 weeks would have prevented her choice on how best to proceed when her unborn baby was diagnosed with a terminal condition. Davis said she almost shared her story of Tate then, but she felt it would overshadow the day's events.

Davis has previously disclosed the termination of another pregnancy, a medical necessity because the egg was implanted in her fallopian tube. That ectopic pregnancy wasn't sustainable, and her doctor advised her it would be dangerous to her health to continue because it would risk rupturing her tube, she said in her memoir.

Davis wrote that the ending of the ectopic pregnancy “is technically considered an abortion,” and that that she also was “heartbroken” over that loss. She said she believed that she was carrying a boy, whom she and Jeff already referred to as “Baby Lucas.”

In her campaign, Davis has largely couched the abortion issue in terms of women's access to health care.

The story of her pregnancy with Tate, however, is a key part of her memoir. The book's dedication begins, “For my daughters, Amber and Dru and Tate, who taught me a love deeper than I believed was possible.”

Amber is her daughter from her first marriage and Dru, from her second, to Jeff Davis, a former City Council member.

The book also is dedicated to Davis' parents, whose tumultuous relationship is detailed in the book, along with that volatility's tough impact on their children.

Davis previously has talked about the financial strain when her father left the family and pursued his dream of a career in theater, but the book includes sometimes stark detail about those times and other parts of her life.

At one point, Davis said, her mother put her three young children in the trunk of her car in the garage, intending to get in the car herself and start the engine. She told Davis years later that she didn't want to live without her husband and didn't want to leave her children behind.

A neighbor dropped by and ended up praying with her, getting her past the dark spot.

“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. Like that one,” Davis said.

Davis more than once cites “angels” and talks about her faith in God in the memoir as she outlines her life story, which has come under a microscope because of its importance to her narrative in the governor's race.

The memoir adds layers of detail to her story of a hardscrabble life after her father left their family; her struggles to pay the bills as a young mother after her first marriage ended; and community college as the first step on an upward path including graduation from Harvard Law School and service on the Fort Worth City Council and in the state Senate.

Davis previously has faced questions for suggesting she was a teen-age single mom (her first divorce wasn't final until she was 21, although she separated earlier) and for her lack of emphasis on her second husband's role in her journey.

She has long cited the essential truth of her story, and the memoir includes specifics. She credits Jeff as her partner and mentor, while maintaining she would have gone through law school even without him.

Davis also writes extensively about her relationship with her first husband and her family, including her sympathy for her mother, the stalwart caregiver, and her father, who left the family in tough financial straits when they divorced and he pursed his dream of community theater — but whom she describes as “magic,” the parent who let her know she was loved. He died last year, before she announced for governor.

Davis ends the book with a story of a time she felt Tate said good-bye to her, when she and her husband and friends were on a golf course and Davis was caught in a cylindrical swirl of leaves, lifted by the wind.

“And I felt her. I was sure of it. Tate. Moving through me, saying her good-byes to me. Letting me go,” Davis wrote.

pfikac@express-news.net