They can suck their thumbs, hear their mother’s voices, and feel pain. But of course, these babies are completely powerless. Wendy Davis, a white southern Democrat, filibustered last night to deny humanity to an entire swath of humans.

Davis clearly wasn’t alone, as the galleries in Austin, Twitter, and the news media showed. But she is in the minority.

She needed to filibuster because an overwhelming majority of both chambers wanted to pass the bill to protect 20-week in-utero babies. And 62 percent of Texans polled support a ban on 20-week abortions. Overwhelmingly, Americans think babies in the second and third trimesters ought to be protected by law.

And it wasn’t just a lone woman standing against the civil-rights views of her colleagues and fellow Texans. It was a loud, yelling mob, preventing the workings of representative democracy.