Wendy Davis – and what she stood for

It took just 13 hours for Texas State Senator Wendy Davis to get national name recognition for filibustering that Texas abortion bill. And now she’s using that fame to try to change the national debate.

Once upon a time it was a moral issue – about when life begins.

But when she talked to Charlie Rose on CBS – one phrase kept coming back, “It’s big government intruding in private lives in Texas.”

She keeps mentioning big government, “Governor Perry and Lt. Governor Dewhurst insist on continuing to exercise big government.”

And you could dismiss that as just the phrase of the day. Except that lately, we’ve seen conservative states that usually try to keep government OUT of your life – making a big exception in this one area.

The Texas bill imposes government requirements on clinics that are so expensive most of them would have to close.
The State of South Dakota now requires doctors to tell women that abortion would subject them to increased risk of “depression and suicide” even though researchers consider that a misinterpretation of the statistics. Some doctors feel the government is forcing them to lie.

And the state of Iowa just passed a law to continue funding of medically-necessary abortions for poor women, but the new law requires the details of each woman’s case to be submitted to the governor, and the governor – a politician – will give the thumbs up or thumbs down on whether she gets Medicaid reimbursement.

Polls show that most Americans don’t trust government. But for more and more women with problem pregnancies, their treatment is indeed the government’s business, whether they trust it or not.