Wendy Davis: Abortion 17 Years Ago Left Me ‘Forever Changed’

Texas state senator Wendy Davis, the Democrat running for Texas governor against Republican attorney general Greg Abbott, tells in her upcoming memoir the story of a pregnancy she and her then husband decided to terminate 17 years ago.

In the book Forgetting to Be Afraid, slated for release next week, Davis says multiple doctors offered medical opinions that the fetus suffered from an acute brain abnormality that was likely incompatible with life, reports the San Antonio Express-News. During the procedure, Davis said she felt the baby, who they’d named Tate Elise, “tremble violently, as if someone were applying an electric shock to her.” A doctor stopped the unborn baby’s heart and the child was delivered by cesarean section.

“An indescribable blackness followed. It was a deep, dark despair and grief, a heavy wave that crushed me, that made me wonder if I would ever surface,” writes Davis. “And when I finally did come through it, I emerged a different person. Changed. Forever changed.”

The abortion debate has been front and center in the Texas governor race that pits Davis, a Democrat who rocketed to national prominence by filibustering passage of strict abortion restrictions in the state, against Abbott, a staunch abortion opponent.

Davis trails Abbott in the polls and faces long odds to win in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in two decades. Her abortion is not expected to hurt her political fortunes, since only a very small number of hard-liners who were unlikely to support her in any event oppose abortion in the case of fetal abnormality.

[San Antonio Express-News]