The eyes of the world were on the Texas Senate on June 25 when Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, staged a dramatic protest of a bill that would have created some of the strongest abortion limits in the nation.

Her 11-plus-hour stand, watched online by hundreds of thousands of viewers, succeeded in killing the bill, if only for a little while.

The special session ended at midnight as wild cheering from abortion-rights supporters in the Senate gallery, the rotunda and on the Capitol steps echoed through the hallways.

"Today was an example of government for the people, by the people and of the people," Davis told supporters after the filibuster, wearing sneakers and a back brace. "And you all are the reason that happened. You were the voices we were speaking for today."

The bill would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and would have created sweeping changes to the standards of care that must be followed by facilities that provide abortions—changes that opponents said would have shut down 37 of the state's 42 clinics.

By law, a special session can last only 30 days. The bill did not get to the Senate for final passage until about 11 a.m. June 25—the last day of the session—giving Davis a 13-hour window to talk the bill to death.

Republicans were able to end her filibuster with two hours left in the session by deciding that her discussion of the state's new sonogram law was off-topic.

Toward midnight, hundreds of protestors in the gallery began yelling, disrupting the proceedings and running out the clock.

Amid the confusion, lawmakers attempted to take a final vote on the bill. Crowd noise drowned out the roll call, and when the session ended, the outcome was unclear.

Dewhurst returned to the floor several hours later and declared that the 19-10 vote in favor of the bill had not been taken before midnight, and the bill had therefore not passed.

District maps approved

The special session had originally been called to ratify the state's current interim political maps. Lawmakers did adopt those maps, but two other bills died at session's end—one related to highway funding and one to a change in the juvenile justice code.

Lawmakers had redrawn district lines during the 2011 session, but the U.S. Department of Justice deemed them illegal.

The maps approved by lawmakers change very little from the current setup for Texas House, Texas Senate and U.S. Congressional members whose district maps were drawn for the interim by a judicial panel in San Antonio last year. The few changes that were made during the special session were on the precinct level.

Gov. Rick Perry called the second special session, which began July 1,

to address those three unpassed bills.

"I am calling the Legislature back into session because too much important work remains undone for the people of Texas," Perry said in a statement.