For a race that encapsulates Texas' raging health care debates, look no further thanSenate District 10in Fort Worth --the matchup between incumbent DemocratWendy Davisand her challenger, Republican state Rep.Mark Shelton.

Shelton, a pediatric infectious disease specialist atCook Children's Hospital, wants to repeal federal health reform ("this is about government-run health care versus patient-centered health care"), prevent aMedicaidexpansion ("it affects access to care") and keepPlanned Parenthoodfar away from state-subsidized women's health care.

"Everyone is for women's health," Shelton said. Planned Parenthood "is about taxpayer funding of abortions and late-term abortions. Wendy is for taxpayer-funded abortions, and I am not."

Davis wants to restore legislative funding that has been cut from women's health ("women of Texas have lost access to health care"), give more low-income patients access to Medicaid ("the community wants us to leave politics at the door") and protect Planned Parenthood as a major provider of cancer screenings and preventive care in Texas.

"They're being held hostage for political purposes," she said of Planned Parenthood, calling Shelton an "ideologue." "We know and he knows that those funds are prohibited from use for abortions."

The two are engaged in a fierce battle for the swing seat, one of the most-watched and most fought-over on the November general election ballot. If Shelton wins, he gets Texas Republicans within one vote of the two-thirds majority they need to render Democrats virtually obsolete in the upper chamber. Democrats, who see Davis as a rising star in the party, want to hold fast to that 12th Senate seat; they've got a better chance since the courts tossed out a Republican-drawn redistricting map that would've changed the district's boundaries.

The candidates have a lot to fight over; health care is just one area where their messages diverge. But their race has drawn a lot of attention from the state's medical and social services groups, who see the matchup as a referendum on many of Texas' biggest health care issues and have weighed in with competing endorsements.

TheTexas Academy of Family Physicians, which generally works hard to add doctors to the ranks of the Legislature, endorsed Davis over Shelton. Tom Banning, the group's executive director, said his organization followed the "friendly incumbent" rule -- endorsing an incumbent whose votes closely aligned with his organization.

"Wendy's record on the issues we care about, that our patients care about, is unassailable," Banning said. "When it came to managed care reform, graduate medical education, scope of practice, even tort reform, she had a perfect voting record."

Banning said that if Shelton were running for re-election in the House, the group would have endorsed him --but that to go against Davis would have sent a bad message to incumbents whom family doctors have asked to make hard votes in the past.

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