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"    Photo: Getty Images   If you woke up this morning and heard, somewhere in the ether, a noise you couldn&amp;#039;t quite recognize, it was probably the sound of history being made. No, we&amp;#039;re not talking about the Supreme Court&amp;#039;s overturning of California&amp;#039;s Defense of Marriage Act\u2014though that too made a buzzy sound\u2014but about the revolutionary events that took place yesterday in Austin, Texas. With 13 hours left to go in a special session of the Texas State Legislature\u2014a session called specifically to enact legislation that would make it harder for Lone Star women to exercise their Constitutional right to an abortion\u2014Democratic Senator Wendy Davis decided she&amp;#039;d had enough. (The bill banned abortions past 20 weeks and required that clinics performing the procedure be classified as ambulatory surgical centers, which many believed would have shut down all but five of the state&amp;#039;s abortion providers).   At 11: 18 A.M., with politicians from her own party vastly outnumbered by GOP lawmakers, Davis launched into a filibuster, which meant that for the next 13 hours, she&amp;#039;d be unable to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, stray off topic, or even lean on her desk. If she committed any of these infractions, she&amp;#039;d be out\u2014ejected from the floor, according to the legislative body&amp;#039;s rules. So as Republican senators searched for ways to cut her off\u2014no, no one offered her a pitcher of lemonaide\u2014Davis read out testimony on abortion and reproductive issues submitted by thousands of women from Texas and across the country. At 6 p.m., she was issued a warning for discussing Planned Parenthood&amp;#039;s budget, a topic that had previously been deemed irrelevant to the discussion. At 7:30, she got her second strike when someone helped her put on a back brace as she was filibustering. Shortly after 10 p.m., the third strike was called: In discussing Texas&amp;#039;s 2011 abortion sonogram law, she had again gone off topic, her opponents charged. The events that followed resembled a Christopher Guest movie more than anything else. After the third point of order was called, Davis&amp;#039;s Democratic colleagues appealed it\u2014a process that featured a mini-filibuster by Austin Senator Kirk Watson. With midnight fast approaching, and the body&amp;#039;s presiding officer, Republican Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, intent on pushing through to a vote, a flurry of Democrats offered motions and endeavored to speak, all of which Dewhurst ignored. &amp;quot;At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?&amp;quot; State Senator Leticia Van de Putte, another Democrat, at one point implored. Then, the jam-packed gallery erupted into cheers\u2014and it quickly became apparent that this was nothing less than a filibuster by the Texas citizenry, by the people who&amp;#039;d flocked to the state house to bear witness to the proceedings. The uproar continued for the last ten minutes of the session, preventing Dewhurst from bringing the legislation to a vote and effectively killing it. What happened in the Texas Senate last night is enough of a story on its own, but one look at Senator Davis&amp;#039;s personal history and the whole saga quickly becomes Oscar-winning movie material: A divorced single mother by age 19, Davis\u2014motivated by the drive to give her child a better life\u2014became the first person in her family to earn a bachelor&amp;#039;s degree. She went on to Harvard Law School, from which she graduated with honors, and then returned to Texas, where she became a Fort Worth City Council member before being elected to the state Senate. And she&amp;#039;s been kicking up dust ever since she got there, even leading a short filibuster in 2011 to kill a budget bill that would have allowed the state to cut over $4 billion from public education. Even in the absence of mainstream news media coverage of the filibuster, Senator Davis&amp;#039; actions yesterday caused a sensation\u2014and people all across the country now know her name. There&amp;#039;s a movement afoot to draft Davis to run for governor, and donations are now rolling in for her campaign. We couldn&amp;#039;t be more impressed, but there&amp;#039;s something we&amp;#039;re dying to know: How did she manage not to use the bathroom for 13 hours? Now that takes guts\u2026or something. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a23344/wendy-davis/?link=emb&dom=yah_life&src=syn&con=blog_elle&mag=elm>