The Texas state senator caused a sensation when she blocked restrictive abortion laws with a filibuster that lasted all day. She explains how she did it and the personal grief that drove her on

Early on the morning of Tuesday 25 June 2013, I awoke to prepare for what I knew would be a difficult day. In a few hours, with the help of my Democratic colleagues, I would attempt to kill Senate Bill 5 – a bill which, if passed, would impose on Texas women some of the most sweeping abortion restrictions in the US. If things went according to plan, I would have to be out on the senate floor by 11:11am to filibuster the bill, talking it to death for 13 hours until midnight, when the clock would run out on the 83rd session of the Texas senate.

The roots of the word “filibuster” can be traced, in different forms, back to Dutch (vrijbuiter) and Spanish (filibustero), but the common meaning was the same –“piracy”– a fitting word. Filibusters in the Texas senate are rare, not just because they can take place only on the last day of a senate session, but because they truly are a test of endurance. Unlike filibusters in the US senate, the rules in Texas are very strict: You may not touch your desk. You may not lean on your desk. You may not have a sip of water. You may not leave the floor for any reason, to eat or to go to the bathroom. You may not even have a stick of gum. On top of that, there’s the three-strike rule: if a senator is called for three points of order for not staying on topic, the filibuster can be ended.

Needing moral support, I spent the night before the big day with my boyfriend, Will. I bathed while listening to Bruce Robison’s What Would Willie Do, as I often do on days that I know will be tough. Its lighthearted lyrics remind me that I can overcome any challenge with the right attitude. At 6:30am, a young female doctor arrived to fit me for a catheter. Knowing why she’d been summoned, she was warm and encouraging. Unfortunately, though, she had not brought a urine-collecting “leg bag” with her but instead a large bag that hospital patients use. The length of tubing was close to six feet, and I knew that getting all of it wrapped around my leg in a way that could be disguised under my clothing was going to be a challenge.

After I dressed, Will brought me a boiled egg. It’s his practice to draw faces on the boiled eggs he keeps in his refrigerator – a gag for his teenage daughters. On this morning Will brought me an egg with an angry grimace, its eyebrows furrowed, its eyes narrowed, its mouth set in a resolute line. I knew that this “badass” egg face was the perfect choice to help me start the day ahead. All it could have used was a penned-in pirate’s eye patch.

As the door closed behind me, I looked down at the flats I was wearing and wondered if they’d have enough support for all the hours I was going to be on my feet. Worrying that they wouldn’t, I ran back inside, grabbed my pink running shoes and headed back out the door.

When I arrived at the capitol around 8:00am, my staff was busy pulling together material. Binders bulged with previous court decisions. Most important, they contained personal testimony by women who were pleading for their right to reproductive health care.

As the zero hour of 11:11am approached, time was running short for me to deal with a problem. It had become patently clear that I was not going to be able to secure the tubing and the bag on my leg in a way that would keep it from slipping below my dress. My staff called the doctor who had inserted it earlier. Could we get a leg bag instead? Around 9:15am, a nurse arrived, we closed the door to my private office, and she changed out the bag.

But within the hour I realised something was terribly wrong. Once again my staff began making urgent calls. With minutes left before I needed to be on the floor, the nurse reappeared, breathless. She’d had to run several blocks and made it just in time to discover that there was a blockage where she had inserted the tube. I had just enough time to empty the bag, reattach it to my leg, and make my way to the floor.

My heart was racing as I reached my desk and I was filled with an anxiety that is hard to describe. “I intend to speak for an extended period of time on the bill,” I said, which is the polite way of saying: “I’m about to filibuster this bill.”

And so it began.

“Members, I’m rising on the floor today to humbly give voice to thousands of Texans who have been ignored. These voices have been silenced by a governor who made blind partisanship and personal political ambition the official business of our great state.”

As my staff watched me moving through the binder that contained these personal stories, they began to worry that we would run out too soon. So, unbeknownst to me, they put out a call through social media – and stories started pouring in via email. Heart-wrenching stories. Over 16,000 in all. Right before my third hour of speaking, I came across the story of Carole M.

‘The emotional toll was difficult, but it became a battle of wits’ … Texas Democratic candidate for governor, Wendy Davis. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

“On 1 December, 2008, I was thrilled to discover that I was pregnant with my first child. Four months later my husband and I went in for an ultrasound, where we were going to find out if we were having a boy or a girl. Unfortunately, that moment was cut short when the doctor told us that our baby was sick. Two days later we were given the heartbreaking news that our daughter had a terminal condition, hydrops fetalis, in which an abnormal amount of fluid builds up in the body. Given the early onset of my daughter’s illness, her condition was very grave, and we left the specialist’s office with our choices. We could wait until she passed, induce my labour, or have a dilation and extraction. Knowing that your daughter is dying is heartbreaking. When you are given the news that there is nothing that can be done to save your baby’s life, it feels like your soul has been ripped apart, but we had a decision to make.”

My voice and hands shook; I wiped tears from my eyes. It was a tale of tremendous sadness, and one that was so hauntingly familiar I could barely speak it out loud. It could have been my story. The story of Tate and what my ex-husband Jeff and I had gone through in 1996, when a scan revealed our unborn daughter had an acute brain abnormality. We terminated the pregnancy and a time of great sorrow for our family followed. When I read Carole M’s words that day in the Texas senate, it felt as though I was reading words I was reading words I could have written.

The emotional toll of the day was difficult enough, but soon it became a battle of wits regarding points of order. Later I was told by one of my colleagues that the Republican members had decided upon a strategy to find three points of order to end the filibuster. At six hours and nine minutes into the filibuster, the first point of order was called on me, when I began to talk about how in 2011 the Texas legislature had voted to cut $77m [£47m] from funding for family-planning services. Senator Robert Nichols called a point of order on the “germaneness” of the topic of abortion prevention to the bill itself, which seemed completely absurd to me, but after a brief debate, the presiding officer ruled in favour of the point of order. My first strike had been called. The ruling stunned me. I was not receiving the deference typically given to a fellow senator on the rare occasions when filibusters occur. And I was pissed.

The second point of order was called a little over an hour later when a colleague helped me put on a back brace. I’d been rubbing my lower back, pushing on it as I was walking around my desk to try to relax the muscles, and someone on my staff had run out to a drugstore and bought a back brace for me. Normally a messenger would bring something over to your desk for you but my colleague Senator Rodney Ellis saw my staff member coming and rather than have it come to me via messenger, he just went over to the rail and handed it to me. When I started to have trouble putting it on – keep in mind I have to keep my microphone in my hand and I have to keep talking! – he tried to help me.

A point of order was called over 45 minutes later. In their desperation to find their three strikes, several of my Republican colleagues argued that Senator Ellis’s act of helping me to tighten this back brace was “assisting a senator during a filibuster” and should therefore count as my second strike.

I started getting madder. And getting mad made me forget about everything going on around me. I wasn’t thinking about my back. I wasn’t hearing or noticing people on the floor. I was solely focused on not getting that third strike. My mind was racing, trying to stay ahead, all while making sure I continued to talk.

Only two hours and seven minutes would elapse until the third point of order was called on me at 9:31pm. As ridiculous as the first two were, the third point of order was a complete travesty. I had begun referencing the sonogram bill that the legislature had passed, which I argued was also an intrusion on access to safe, legal abortion. Before I could finish, Senator Donna Campbell jumped up and called that point of order, and, at 10:03pm the chair ruled it valid.

The gallery erupted. For more than a minute, the audience chanted, “Let her speak! Let her speak!” Within a minute, Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst gestured to Department of Public Safety officers to clear offending members of the gallery.

That third strike effectively ended the speaking portion of my filibuster. I’d spoken my last words. The rest was up to my Democratic colleagues.

We had almost two hours to fill before midnight. It began with a challenge to the ruling of the chair. This challenge, used correctly, forces the removal of the presiding officer while his ruling is debated. My colleagues did a masterful job of continuing to debate that ruling, creating a tremendous amount of chaos in the process. Meanwhile, I had to continue standing, no leaning, no drink of water, no break – because if I did any of those things, the filibuster would automatically be ruled to be at an end. So I stood, adrenaline rushing through my body as I watched my colleagues work to tick away the time.

As they worked, I occasionally glanced at the clock behind me, silently pleading for its hands to move. Finally, in a desperate attempt to shut down debate, someone must have sent an instruction to the folks who take care of our technical issues to turn off the microphones of Democratic senators. At around 11:15pm, our microphones were cut off.

Meanwhile, the people sitting above us were watching anxiously. The gallery had been full to capacity all day and those opposed to the bill far outnumbered the few in support of it.

For most of the day, you could have heard a pin drop. But even a novice could see that the rules were not being applied fairly, so the crowd was getting upset.

Leticia Van de Putte, our senate colleague who’d been absent because her father had died, had driven back to Austin from his funeral. She hadn’t expected to say anything – she just wanted to add her presence as a symbol of support – but she became so frustrated watching what was happening that she, too, began screaming to be heard. At 11:44 pm, 16 minutes before midnight, she asked this question: “At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognised over the male colleagues in the room?”

She’d had to shout but as soon as she did the gallery erupted. It was the perfect statement. And the gallery could be silent no more. The spectators jumped to their feet and started screaming, and by then – because I had reached my breaking point and my patience point, too – rather than try to quiet them, I encouraged them. They had been obeying the rules all day while I’d watched my Republican colleagues breaking them. I’d had enough. We knew if we could keep them going and keep a vote from being taken, we could get to that midnight deadline. Which is exactly what happened.

And even though that awful bill restricting women’s reproductive rights passed just a few days later when a second special session was called, people were empowered by what they’d been able to accomplish that day. I see that now everywhere I go in Texas – an awakening to what it means to participate and how empowering that can be, and a new understanding and acceptance of the fact that we cannot cede our values simply because we may not win every time.

This is an edited extract from Forgetting to be Afraid by Wendy Davis, published in the US by Blue Rider Press.