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Nine years ago, former state Sen. Wendy Davis stood on the floor of the Texas Senate in pink sneakers for 13 uninterrupted hours in an attempt to block a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks into a pregnancy and shut down a majority of the state’s clinics.
Back then, she and other reproductive rights advocates in the Legislature thought those efforts by Texas Republicans to restrict abortion access would be “as bad as it could get.” They were buoyed by their confidence that they had the law of the land on their side: Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to an abortion.
