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" \n It&amp;#039;s a steamy weekday afternoon in Austin and there&amp;#039;s a face-off on the front lawn of the capitol. A young woman in sunglasses and shorts stands with a sign declaring, &amp;quot;My pussy is not your property.&amp;quot;  A man has taken issue with that. &amp;quot;That is a horrible word,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Just nasty.&amp;quot; Several young women swoop in, signs in hand, forming a semicircle around the guy. &amp;quot;I love my pussy,&amp;quot; says one. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m damn proud of it!&amp;quot; Tall and pretty with strawberry-blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, she shocks the guy into temporary silence. He walks off muttering.  Austin is the ground zero of the national abortion wars. Texas is embroiled in a vigorous debate over legislation that would ban abortion at 20 weeks after fertilization and place new regulations on abortion clinics\u2014mandating that clinics meet the standards of hospital-style surgical centers and that doctors have patient-admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles.  Critics say it&amp;#039;s part of a nationwide push among abortion opponents to erode women&amp;#039;s reproductive rights and chip away at Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that legalizes abortion. In other words, since abortion can&amp;#039;t be outlawed, it can be increasingly restricted. In the first six months of this year, state lawmakers across the country enacted 43 provisions aimed at restricting access to abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group specializing in women&amp;#039;s reproductive health.  Proponents of the Texas legislation argue that it improves health and safety for women. Opponents argue that it does the opposite, forcing clinics to close and thereby endangering women. And some people just plain argue. Inside the capitol, amid the sweeping stairways and stately portraits of governors, fired-up protestors swarm the halls and crowd into an outdoor rotunda, shouting at each other about fetuses. In another wing, the scene is more like a hippie love-in\u2014a dozen folks stand in a circle, holding hands and singing about rising like a phoenix.  &amp;quot;This is not about the health and safety of women,&amp;quot; says state senator Sylvia Garcia, a Democrat who opposes the Texas legislation. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a back-door approach to making abortion as difficult to access as possible. It&amp;#039;s putting women in much more harm.&amp;quot; She and other abortion-rights advocates say the legislation would force the closure of all but five of the 42 abortion clinics in Texas, as the regulations create an unnecessary, expensive and near-impossible burden; for instance, it can be difficult for a clinic to attain hospital admitting privileges if the hospital has a religious affiliation.  State representative Geanie Morrison, a Republican who supports the legislation, has a different take. &amp;quot;I know abortion is legal in this country\u2014this is not prohibiting anyone from making that decision,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;We want to protect women and make sure that when they make a choice, they have all the facts and that it&amp;#039;s a safe process.&amp;quot; She says two-thirds of abortion doctors in Texas already have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and that she thinks &amp;quot;the majority of clinics will meet the standards\u2014this is a profit-making business.&amp;quot;  The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG, a professional association of physicians, came out against the Texas legislation this week, saying that &amp;quot;while we can agree to disagree about abortion on ideological grounds,&amp;quot; the regulations on clinics are &amp;quot;unnecessary and unsupported by scientific evidence.&amp;quot; The group noted that &amp;quot;abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with minimal\u2014less than 0.5 percent\u2014risk of major complications that might need hospital care.&amp;quot;  Democratic state senator Wendy Davis became a local sensation in late June when she staged a 12-hour filibuster to help block abortion legislation. During her talk-a-thon, supporters streamed in to the Texas capitol, piling onto the balcony above the Senate floor to cheer her on till the wee hours. The bill did not pass. But the battle raged on: Governor Rick Perry ordered a 30-day special session to revisit the issue. Lawmakers drew up new legislation, which will likely be passed by the end of this week, then will head to the governor to sign into law.  Sen. Davis\u2014a onetime teen mother who put herself through Harvard Law School\u2014and the pink sneakers she wore for the filibuster captured the national imagination, with bloggers discussing everything from the significance of the sneaker color to the manufacturer and sales; some discussed whether it&amp;#039;s sexist to discuss the senator&amp;#039;s shoes at all. Amid the roaring sneaker debate, the issues at the heart of the abortion debate were often lost.  Anti-abortion activists in Texas and elsewhere argue that a fetus can feel pain starting at 20 weeks after fertilization and hence should not be aborted. (The Texas legislation makes an exception if the life of the mother is at stake, but does not make exceptions for rape or incest.) However, Elizabeth Nash, a state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, says the fetal-pain argument is not supported by science and that a fetus does not have the neurological capability at that point to experience pain. ACOG agrees, saying that &amp;quot;recent and rigorous scientific reviews have concluded that there is no evidence of fetal perception of pain until 29 weeks at the earliest.&amp;quot;  Abortion-rights advocates argue that opponents are drumming up the 20-week debate to spread misinformation and gain support. &amp;quot;Abortions later in pregnancy are extremely rare, with nearly 99 percent taking place before 21 weeks,&amp;quot; Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in recent statement. &amp;quot;But when they do happen, it&amp;#039;s often in heartbreaking and unusual circumstances, and women and their doctors need to have every medical option available to them.&amp;quot;  Rep. Morrison argues that there is a debate about fetal pain within the medical community. She cites two medical experts currently serving in the Texas House. &amp;quot;We have a neurosurgeon member of the House and an anesthesiologist who strongly believe a baby at 20 weeks can feel pain,&amp;quot; she says. She adds, &amp;quot;At just 12 to 13 weeks, a baby develops fingernails. By 20 weeks, a baby is eight to 10 inches long. Babies who have been born as early as 21 weeks have survived.&amp;quot;  A fetus is generally considered viable, or able to live outside the womb, at 24 to 26 weeks after fertilization, says Nash. State laws vary, but the standard has generally been not to ban abortion before viability, she says. But that is changing: Bans on abortion at 20 weeks after fertilization have been enacted in 10 states, says Nash, while an 11th state, Arizona, bans abortion at 18 weeks. In three of those states, current legal challenges are preventing the legislation from taking effect.  Emotions run high on both sides. Out on the grassy grounds of the capitol, Ben Cockerham, a soft-spoken 36-year-old special-ed teacher, holds a sign saying, &amp;quot;Life: The First Inalienable Right.&amp;quot; In a T-shirt and baseball cap, he tells me he felt moved to come out and protest based on a personal experience. &amp;quot;When I was 18, my parents started having a lot of problems,&amp;quot; he says, explaining that an incident from their past had come back to haunt them. &amp;quot;I found out my father had pressured my mother to have an abortion about 17 years earlier. Money was tight back then\u2014they couldn&amp;#039;t afford another child,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;But she was still upset, all those years later.&amp;quot;  On the other side of the issue is Kim Thurman, a 22-year-old assistant at a children&amp;#039;s museum. A recent college graduate, she sports bright yellow nail polish and says she headed to the capitol around 11 p.m. on the night of the filibuster to cheer on Sen. Davis. &amp;quot;It was all over Facebook,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I wanted to support Wendy.&amp;quot; She adds, &amp;quot;Personally, I&amp;#039;d probably never get an abortion, mainly because I&amp;#039;m terrified of medical procedures. But I would like to be able to have that option.&amp;quot;  Over in the office of Sen. Davis, young staffers click away on computers and field phone calls, surrounded by half-wilted bouquets sent from supporters in the past week. An intern picks up the phone and listens patiently to an apparent crank call, saying, &amp;quot;Do you have any serious comments for the senator?&amp;quot;  Sen. Davis looks the picture of cool in a black sheath dress, appearing relaxed despite the recent chaos. Her people say they&amp;#039;ve been blown away by the national media storm. I tell the senator about a young woman I met on the plane to Austin, a college student who didn&amp;#039;t know there was an abortion debate raging in her own home state. The senator sighs and says these are the women she needs to reach. To that end, she has joined with Planned Parenthood and others in a new campaign called &amp;quot;Stand With Texas Women,&amp;quot; with a bus tour making its way across the state.  The debate about regulations on abortion clinics is raging well beyond Texas: Wisconsin&amp;#039;s governor recently passed legislation mandating that doctors who perform abortions have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals; legal challenges have temporarily blocked it. Two other states have had legal battles about this as well, with legislation being suspended by judges. In North Carolina, the House passed a bill this week that would require abortion clinics to adhere to the same standards as surgical centers, following the passage of a similar bill in the Senate. Abortion opponents say the rules will prevent horrors such as the illegal Philadelphia clinic where Dr. Kermit Gosnell was recently found to have murdered babies after failed abortions. Abortion-rights activists say the new rules will shutter clinics and force women into back-alley situations precisely like the Gosnell clinic, which reportedly drew poor women who felt they had few options.  In Texas, Sen. Garcia says, if the legislation gets signed into law, as expected, there will be legal challenges.  Anna Ruth, a 26-year-old who works in dispute resolution in Austin, says she&amp;#039;s glad to see people coming to the capitol to argue their point. In diamond earrings and dark-rimmed glasses, she sits on a wooden bench under a dome inside the capitol and says she is against the proposed legislation. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m in a feminist book club\u2014a lot of the older women remember what it was like before legal abortion,&amp;quot; she says. She came out to protest on the night of the filibuster, and then again to give testimony on her thoughts on abortion at a House committee meeting. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s bittersweet that we have to be out here doing this,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s encouraging to see people stand up.&amp;quot; Follow Abigail on Twitter @AbigailPesta "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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