Wendy Davis, a Texas state senator, got national attention last week for her marathon filibuster against an extremist package of abortion restrictions. Ms. Davis’s dramatic gesture is unlikely to stop the hard-right Texas Legislature from passing the bill, and there are many similar measures around the country that are part of a nonstop attack on women’s reproductive rights by Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion groups.

But her uprising, which shot around the country on Twitter and the rest of the social Web, showed that Democrats can fight back against the anti-abortion-rights campaign. It is already showing signs of revitalizing a somnambulant Texas Democratic Party, and it should inspire abortion-rights advocates everywhere.

Last Tuesday, talking for more than 11 hours, Ms. Davis actually blocked passage of the new abortion restrictions by essentially running out the clock on a special legislative session. Her victory may prove to be short-lived. Texas’s Republican governor, Rick Perry, has called another special session beginning on Monday to try to resurrect the bill.

The measure, a grab bag of constitutionally dubious ideas from other places, would give Texas one of the strictest abortion laws in the nation, and that is saying a lot these days. If enacted, it would ban abortions at 20 weeks post-fertilization; there would be no rape exception, and a narrow physical health exception would jeopardize women’s lives by requiring risk to a “major bodily function” before a woman could terminate a pregnancy.