Eric Gay/Associated Press
State Senator Wendy Davis started a filibuster at 11:18 a.m. Tuesday in the hope of holding the floor by talking until the Senate's special session ended at midnight.
AUSTIN, Tex. — Hours after claiming that they successfully passed some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country, Republican lawmakers reversed course and said a disputed late-night vote on the bill did not follow legislative procedures, rendering the vote moot and giving Democrats a bitterly fought if short-lived victory.
Jennifer Whitney for The Texas Tribune
A sonogram at the Whole Woman's Health Surgical Center in San Antonio, one of five Texas abortion clinics that would meet tighter abortion restrictions under a Texas bill. Opponents of the legislation said it would force 37 other clinics to close.
Erich Schlegel for The New York Times
Women's rights advocates waited to attend the Senate session.
The state Senate voted on the abortion bill at the end of a 10-hour-plus filibuster by a Fort Worth Democrat. But the vote came right at a midnight deadline amid widespread confusion and the noise of a chanting crowd of the bill's opponents in an upstairs gallery. The legislative session expired at midnight, and Senate Democrats said the vote took place at 12:02 a.m. or 12:03 a.m., while Republicans disputed those claims, saying the vote was legitimate.
But at 3 a.m., Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the presiding officer of the Senate and a Republican supporter of the bill, told lawmakers and reporters that although the bill passed on a 19 to 10 vote, the bill could not be signed in the presence of the Senate and was therefore dead, blaming "an unruly mob using Occupy Wall Street tactics" as the primary cause.
"With all the ruckus and noise going on," Mr. Dewhurst said, he could not complete administrative duties to make the vote official and sign the bill. Senate Democrats and women's right's advocates said the real reason the vote could not be made official was a time stamp on official documents that showed the bill passed after midnight.
The state House had already approved the bill on Monday, and Gov. Rick Perry, a staunch abortion opponent who said this year that his goal was to make abortion "a thing of the past," had been expected to sign it into law.
The bill would have made Texas the 12th state to bar most abortions at 20 weeks after fertilization and later — a step that has been blocked in three states so far as unconstitutional. The more pressing concern for clinic managers and advocates for women's rights was a requirement in the bill that all 42 abortion clinics in the state be licensed as ambulatory surgery centers.
Five clinics performing late-term abortions already meet that standard. But for most of the remaining 37, the new restriction would have required costly renovations or relocation to meet architectural and equipment requirements. Proponents say the requirements would have improved patient safety, but the clinics, with the support of major medical societies, say they are not necessary.
"We know that it would shut down dozens of clinics in the state of Texas, a state of 26 million people, and there will be women who cannot reach a health care provider to get reproductive health care for hundreds of miles," said Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and a daughter of Ann W. Richards, the former Texas governor. "This is the thing that's frightening. Women will do whatever they have to do to take care of themselves."
Ms. Richards was among hundreds of men, women and children who packed the Capitol on Tuesday to voice their opposition to the legislation, and to support Senate Democrats as they tried to run out the clock on the bill.
The Senate convened shortly after 11 a.m. to take up the version of the bill that the House had passed. But the 30-day special session of the Legislature was set to expire at midnight. The Fort Worth Democrat, Senator Wendy Davis, began talking at 11:18 a.m. in a filibuster attempt to prevent lawmakers from voting on the bill before the midnight deadline. She spoke for hours, standing in the carpeted chamber in pink running shoes. Senate rules set strict requirements on how she could perform a filibuster – she was forbidden from straying off topic or sitting in her chair, for example – and if she was found to have violated the rules three times, her filibuster would effectively come to an end.
Ms. Davis is something of a filibuster star among Texas Democrats. At the end of the legislative term in 2011, she forced Mr. Perry to call a special session after her filibuster ran the clock out on a budget bill that included cuts in public education. But at 10 p.m. on Tuesday, 11 hours after she first stood up, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst sustained a violation against her for straying off the topic. It was her third violation. As the senators debated the next steps, Ms. Davis remained standing, because it was uncertain whether the filibuster had officially ended.
Democrats accused Mr. Dewhurst of going back on his earlier statements that he would bring the end of the filibuster to a vote if Ms. Davis had three violations. As the clock neared midnight, the crowd erupted in a long burst of noise, and several Democratic senators said they believed they were voting on a procedural matter when the vote for the abortion bill was taken. "I don't mind losing fair and square, but this has been a total sham and mockery of the rules," said State Senator Leticia Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat.The five clinics already licensed as surgical centers are in the state's larger cities — Austin, San Antonio and Dallas each have one, and Houston has two — a hardship, women's rights advocates said, for women in rural areas. The bill would have also required all doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, a rule that by itself could force the closing of some clinics that use visiting doctors or whose local hospitals refuse to provide such privileges.
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has declared such a rule medically irrelevant; emergency patients, the group says, would go by ambulance to a local hospital and be treated by hospital staff in any case. The admitting privilege requirement has been blocked by court order in Mississippi and North Dakota, states with only one clinic each performing surgical abortions that use outside doctors and would be forced to shut down.
The bill was strongly promoted by Mr. Dewhurst, a Republican who faces conservative challengers in his run for re-election next year. In a recent statement, he said the proposed restrictions "will save innocent lives and better protect the health of women who make the choice to terminate a pregnancy."
Manny Fernandez reported from Austin, and Erik Eckholm from New York. Laura Tillman contributed reporting from McAllen, Tex.
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