Wendy Davis proves you can do it--keep your baby and succeed

Enlarge photo by: Robert Hart

Wendy Davis, flanked by her father, Jerry Russell at left and her two daughters, at right, applauds her supporters during her victory speech at the Fort Worth Hilton on November 6, 2012.

Let's give a shout out to single mother-at-19 who made something of her life! Wendy Davis of Texas who has captivated America with her 11-hour filibuster against a restrictive abortion bill in Austin the other day has an unusual pedigree. (CNN PHOTO)

Wendy Davis is the daughter of a single mother herself. She was married, divorced and a single mother by the time she was 19.

She is just the kind of young woman adoption agencies would have been glad to get their hands on, taking her baby so she could be adopted, and allowing the woman could go on to college and have a life unfettered with the realities of raising a baby.

Ms. Davis told The New York Times she "fell through the cracks" in high school as she was working at an early age to help support the family, her mother and three siblings. Her mother had only a sixth grade education. An early marriage right after high school was followed by a birth and a quick divorce, and at 19, she was living in a trailer park in Fort Worth. She thought she was destined to live the struggling life her mother had.

FROM TRAILER PARK TO HARVARD LAW
Someone showed her a brochure for Tarrant County College; she enrolled and took courses to be a paralegal, working two jobs at the time. From Tarrant, she won a scholarship to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, and then went on to Harvard Law. "When I was accepted in Harvard Law School, I remember thinking about who I am, and where I came from, and where I had been only a few years before," she told the Times. She has two daughters now, ages 30 and 24, and has been dating the former mayor of Austin.

Not bad for a single mother at nineteen! The mantra today is to try to convince young women to give up their babies with the idea that they can have a better life without them, finish their education and continue on an upward climb to success they would not have without a baby. As Ms. Davis shows, it all depends on who you are and how determined you are to work hard.

The Adoption Option, the white-paper from The Center for American Progress that Jane and I deconstructed some time ago, states: [R]esearch shows that teens who relinquish their babies tend to have higher incomes, higher education levels, higher future academic and career goals, and a strong adoption preference voiced by the birth father and/or the teen’s mother. (For a young teen, this "strong preference" translates into no choice, even today.

We looked beyond their simplistic readings of a single study of women who stayed in a home for unwed mothers, and pointed out their fallacies and wrote of how the grief that most women encounter after relinquishment leads to lifelong sorrow. We pointed out that the impact of giving up a baby often does not reappear for many years. We questioned why an progressive think tank would seek to foster this "pro-adoption" stance. Or why "pro-family" conservatives would for that matter. The only difference is that they throw in a dose redemption into the adoption mix.

Wendy Davis was trying to stop the passage of a bill that would close most abortion clinics (under the guise of expanded health and safety regulations) and make abortion illegal past 20 weeks. Texas has one of the highest teenage motherhood rates in the country, and a majority of the women are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Funding for family planning has been slashed. Gov. Rick Perry doesn't give a damn about women who aren't well off enough to pay for family planning for themselves, but he does want them to have their babies. He is so clearly political about this issue you can see right through him.

WHEN STANDING, WEAR SNEAKERS

Her Mizuno sneakers

Davis held the sexist Texas legislature at bay for a day to prevent the passage of this anti-abortion bill. She stood on her feet, in salmon colored sneakers, and followed the onerous rules that said she could not take a break--even to go to the bathroom or lean on her desk or talk about anything other than the bill at hand--for more than 11 hours. (By contrast, when Rand Paul did his famous filibuster in the Senate earlier this year, he read from Alice in Wonderland.) When Ms. Davis spoke about the abortion legislation that requires women to under go an uncomfortable and invasive transvaginal ultrasound--and then wait 24 hours--before having an abortion, the lieutenant governor of Texas, David Dewhurst, said she had strayed off topic and thus the filibuster had to come to an end. Time to vote.

But the crowd erupted into a roar and prevented the legislators from taking their vote. Gov. Rick Perry, who has the movie star looks of Rock Hudson and the brains of a Karl Rove puppet, is calling a special session for July 1st to get this bill passed. The war against the right of women to make their own reproductive choices will must go on, until every last abortion is only available in an expensive hospital or a backalley illegal clinic. But Ms. Davis has made her point.

With her style of speaking, keen intelligence and good hair, Ms. Davis proves that being a single-mother-at-19 is not a prescription for poverty and failure. With grit and determination, you can have your baby and succeed. We will hear from her again.--lorraine

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From FMF
Thinking of Placing Your Baby for Adoption? Think very hard.
Response to The Adoption Option
How giving up a child affects you in the long-term

SOURCES
In Texas, a Senator’s Stand Catches the Spotlight
Tough odds are the norm for Texas lawmaker Wendy Davis
Perry renews Texas abortion battle with special session

My Abortion, at 23 Weeks

Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States
 

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, advocates of legal abortion mostly used the term rights when describing their agenda. But after Roe v. Wade, their determination to develop a respectable, nonconfrontational movement encouraged many of them to use the word choice--an easier concept for people weary of various rights movements. At first the distinction in language didn't seem to make much difference-the law seemed to guarantee both. But in the years since, the change has become enormously important.

In Beggars and Choosers, Solinger shows how historical distinctions between women of color and white women, between poor and middle-class women, were used in new ways during the era of "choice." Politicians and policy makers began to exclude certain women from the class of "deserving mothers" by using the language of choice to create new public policies concerning everything from Medicaid funding for abortions to family tax credits, infertility treatments, international adoption, teen pregnancy, and welfare. Solinger argues that the class-and-race-inflected guarantee of "choice" is a shaky foundation on which to build our notions of reproductive freedom. Her impassioned argument is for reproductive rights as human rights--as a basis for full citizenship status for women. --Amazon