Texas steels for new abortion bill fight -- set for Monday

A special session set for Monday in Texas will reignite debate over a controversial abortion bill that was blocked this week after a marathon filibuster and shouting fracas by the bill's detractors. Texas Gov. Rick Perry was critical of the lawmaker who led the filibuster.

Reuters: Texas Governor Slams State Lawmakers Who Stalled Abortion Bill
Texas Governor Rick Perry made a highly personal criticism on Thursday of the state senator who thwarted a Republican proposal to restrict abortion, saying she had not learned from her own experience as a teenage mother born to a single mother. In a speech to the largest anti-abortion group in the United States, Perry also accused abortion rights supporters and Democrat Wendy Davis, who talked for more than 10 hours on Tuesday to block the abortion bill, of hijacking the democratic process (Garza, 6/27).

Politico: Abortion Tables May Turn In Texas On Monday
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a message for those hailing new liberal icon Wendy Davis for bringing down a restrictive state abortion measure: Enjoy it while it lasts. Come Monday, the Texas Legislature will reconvene in special session, and enacting far-reaching abortion limits is a top Perry priority (Glueck, 6/27).

CBS News: Wendy Davis' Filibuster A "Hijacking Of The Democratic Process," Texas Gov. Says
Disparaging the pro-choice "mob" that flooded the Texas State Capitol Tuesday night, Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, urged supporters at the National Right to Life convention to "match their intensity" in backing a pro-life agenda. "It's important to remember that as a state, while we are under an obligation to protect the health and safety of people who live here, who are at no obligation to make things easier for the abortionist," Perry said in his keynote address to the convention Thursday in Dallas. "The ideal world is a world without abortion" (Haven, 6/27).

The Texas Tribune: How Activists Yelled An Abortion Bill To Death
Minutes before midnight in the Texas Capitol on Tuesday, thousands of protesters stopped a restrictive abortion bill in its tracks by yelling at the top of their lungs. The remarkable and surprisingly successful moment had not been planned by the established groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice Texas and the Texas Democratic Party that had done much of the organizing for the protests against Senate Bill 5 (Batheja, 6/28).