I spent the summer of 2013 at the Texas Capitol, covering the fight over abortion rights that was taking place deep in the heart of Texas for the Austin Chronicle. The stakes of the fight were clear. If the law being debated that summer were to pass, the number of abortion clinics would drop from forty-two down, potentially, to single digits. The sides, too, were simply aligned. Those who opposed the restrictions donned orange clothing and gathered in conference rooms and the offices of Democratic lawmakers throughout the building, receiving seemingly-endless stacks of pizza boxes sent to them by sympathetic observers following along on social media. Those who supported the law wore blue t-shirts were smaller in number, but gathered outside and throughout the building to pray, chant, and organize together in contrast of their orange-shirted counterparts.

In the end, though, it seemed that power belonged with those in blue. Lawmakers seeking to pass the law silenced hundreds who had shown up to testify with the swing of a gavel and the declaration that their intensely personal stories had grown “repetitive.” Still bound, at that time, by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, those same lawmakers would insist that they had no interest whatsoever in restricting the constitutional right to abortion access, and were insulted at the insinuation that their bill would do anything other than make the procedure marginally safer for patients, and if dozens of clinics across the state were forced to close to comply with the new law, that was merely an unfortunate coincidence. Then, on the final day of the first special legislative session that summer, as a state senator named Wendy Davis began a thirteen-hour filibuster, structured by the rules of the Texas Senate as an endurance contest, those same lawmakers stepped over those rules to push through a vote with just a few minutes to go before midnight.

A strange thing happened then, though. Spontaneously, with no opportunity for coordination, the hundreds of orange-shirted protesters in the Senate gallery, and the thousands more within the Capitol, took power for themselves, using their literal voices to buy a few precious minutes of time to kill the bill.

My young adult novel, The Fight For Midnight, is a story about a teenage boy who finds himself in the building on that day. Like many teenage boys, he assumes that abortion isn’t his fight, and hasn’t given much thought to what he believes. He’s influenced through the course of the book by two young women—one his lifelong crush, who came to the Capitol in a blue dress, the other a former friend who cut the neck out of her orange t-shirt before heading to downtown Austin that morning. I wanted to tell the story through this character because what I saw at the Capitol that summer was transformative for me, even as a fully-formed adult who had long come to the conclusion that abortion rights are essential to the autonomy, freedom, and dignity we are all owed. I couldn’t help but imagine how much it would have meant to me if I had had that experience instead as a teenager, when my values were still being shaped. Because while the politicians seeking to pass the anti-abortion law that summer were often cynical in their motivations, most of the people I saw at the Capitol dressed in blue, especially the young adults among them, were motivated by beliefs as genuine as those held by their opponents in orange.

In writing the book, I wanted to acknowledge that recognizing the conviction of those we disagree with doesn’t mean wavering in our own. I wanted to tell this story through a teenage boy who identifies, at the start of the book, as a “white shirt,” in order to demonstrate that recognizing the conviction of those we disagree with doesn’t mean wavering in our own. Rather, it’s the opposite. By understanding that those we disagree with are no less impassioned, no less sincere, and no less determined than we are strengthens our convictions and our values by testing and reaffirming them.

By the time the book was published in June 2023, Roe v. Wade had been overturned for a full year, and politicians no longer had to pretend that the abortions laws they sought to pass existed for any reason other than to limit access to the procedure for those who need it. At this point, the laws in Texas—as in much of the country—are wildly more restrictive and punitive than anything in the bill that Wendy Davis donned her pink sneakers to filibuster in 2013. The fight for abortion rights continues, and it’s likely to continue for years to come. Maybe forever.

I wrote The Fight for Midnight to tell a story about the ways that fight can be joyful and inspiring, as well as heartbreaking and unfair. I wanted young people today to know that sometimes—not always, but sometimes—their voices will be able to shake the foundations of the institutions that seek to take their power away. That’ll be true forever, too.