Texas Right to Life’s website has been flooded with threats, some of which include employees’ personal information.
Since the Supreme Court declined to block Texas’s recently passed heartbeat abortion law, at least one organization on the frontlines of the pro-life movement has come under assault.
Texas Right to Life, a non-profit which fights for the rights of the unborn through education and lobbying, has received numerous threats of violence against its personnel in the wake of the August 31 decision and reported those threats to the local police and the FBI, vice president Elizabeth Graham told National Review. Onesimo Lopez, chief the Bellaire police department in Houston, confirmed that his office fielded a report detailing those threats Tuesday and said that an investigation is underway.
The Texas law, which prohibits abortion after a heartbeat can be detected, preempts expected legal challenges by delegating enforcement to private citizens rather than state officials. Graham said this unusual provision enraged the pro-abortion crowd because it “keeps the law out of the talons of judicial activists,” who have successfully blocked heartbeat laws in other states by relying on the precedent set by Roe v. Wade.
To support the law’s implementation, Texas Right to Life created a whistleblower website through which any individual can anonymously report doctors or any one else who knowingly performs or aids an illegal abortion, without revealing the identities of the women whom they were performed on.
When the website launched, pro-abortion activists used the tip-line to threaten employees at the organization. Some of the threats referenced employees’ home addresses and other personal information. In addition, some attempted to take down the internal network by overloading the system so it would crash, Graham said. The whistleblower site was reportedly flooded with fake tips and memes too. The site briefly went offline Thursday, after a pro-abortion activist shared an iOS shortcut to allow users to submit fake information through the website, Tech Crunch reported.
Protesters have also reportedly shown up at the TRL Houston headquarters. Other operatives threatened physical violence at the organization’s upcoming fundraising galas and celebrations, Graham said.
As to the quantity and magnitude of the threats, the TRL vice president said they face “hundreds per day, and we can’t even go through most of them. Most are entertainment, and some are vicious.”
She said they prove the pro-choice movement is on its back foot, but she was still disheartened by the depth of belief that would cause someone to threaten physical violence.
“On one hand, the vitriol and venom being spewed is so hurtful and it shows that they are walking wounded taking their anger out on the law. But on the other hand, so many people believe in the religion of abortion and child sacrifice,” she said.
While the website did not shut down, the hosting platform, GoDaddy, alleged that the organization violated its terms of service and gave the company a deadline of 24 hours to find another host. Since then, Texas Right to Life’s legal team has been working to migrate its database to a more secure, safer, and hospitable server.
Graham shared that several CEOs and company leaders have reached out in solidarity with the pro-life group, offering to onboard it as a customer.
It remains unclear whether the threats were sent by individuals acting alone or were part of a coordinated group effort.
Amid the threats, the organization has notified its satellite offices to take extra security precautions and stepped up police patrols around its main offices day and night.
Last week, Texas Right to Life accidentally exposed the personal files of hundreds of job applicants, including names, phone numbers, addresses, and employment history details, after a bug infected the website, according to Tech Crunch. In an interview with the publication, Kimberlyn Schwartz, a spokesperson for Texas Right to Life, suggested that people with malicious intentions could have exploited the security lapse to use the information against applicants.
“We are taking action to protect the concerned individuals,” she told Tech Crunch, referring to those who “sought and circulated the information.”
Also last week, Planned Parenthood, a large federally-funded abortion provider, secured a temporary restraining order blocking Texas Right to Life from enforcing the Texas heartbeat law by suing those who perform or aid illegal abortions. It barred the pro-life organization from “instituting private-enforcement lawsuits” against Planned Parenthood, as well as its doctors and staff, CBS News reported.
The county judge ruled that the law “creates a probable, irreparable, and imminent injury” to Planned Parenthood, while Texas Right to Law would endure no injury if it was prevented from enforcing the measure.
But the fight over Texas’s unique approach may well be rendered moot should the Supreme Court overturn Roe in its upcoming term, which begins in October.