Wendy Davis reveals abortion in memoir

Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Wendy Davis, known for delaying passage of sweeping abortion restrictions in Texas, reveals in her new memoir that she terminated two pregnancies.

Davis says they were terminated in the 1990s due to medical reasons. One fetus had developed a devastating brain abnormality, and the other was an ectopic pregnancy, in which an embryo implants outside the uterus, The Associated Press reports.

{mosads}Still, Davis writes in the campaign memoir, Forgetting to be Afraid, that both are “technically considered an abortion, and doctors have to report it as such.”

Davis and her husband decided to abort the second pregnancy in 1996 after the doctor said the baby would be deaf, blind and in a permeative vegetative state if she survived delivery.

“I could feel her little body tremble violently, as if someone were applying an electric shock to her, and I knew then what I needed to do,” Davis writes, according to the Associated Press. “She was suffering.”

Davis is facing Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott in her gubernatorial bid. Abbot is the favorite to replace Republican Gov. Rick Perry next year.

Davis’s 2013 filibuster on the abortion bill drew national attention as thousands watched it live online. President Obama also joined in during her all-night filibuster, tweeting, “something special is happening in Austin tonight.”