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Days after a controversial abortion law took effect in Texas, an anti-abortion group is encouraging people to enforce it by using a reporting website.
The law bans virtually all abortions by outlawing the procedure after six weeks –– before most people know they’re even pregnant. It took effect Wednesday (September 1) after the Supreme Court failed to act on emergency legal challenges filed by abortion providers in the state.
Private citizens, not a state entity, are the ones who actually enforce it because the law clears the way for individuals to file civil lawsuits against anyone who seeks an abortion after six weeks or anyone who helps a person get the procedure. If the citizen wins the lawsuit in court, they’re entitled to a minimum award of $10,000 plus attorney fees.
To encourage enforcement of the law, anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life launched a website to anonymously report people who might be violating the law. One Black TikToker created an algorithm to overload the site with fake tips, showing off his handy work in a now viral video.
“Okay hear me out, what if someone very technical, very handsome set up a bot that automatically sent the request to their website,” Sean Black, known on Tik Tok as @black_madness21 says in the video.
Black’s showed off the code, which automatically inputs phony data into the site every 10 to 15 seconds. Before the site cut off his computer’s access to the site, Black’s bot had sent about 300 fake tips.
The tech-savvy Tik Toker even created a way for others to access the bot and do the same.
Activists who oppose Texas’ law say that it will only push the procedure underground and put people’s health and lives at risk. Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee slammed the law, calling it “devious.”
“This is an example of the dastardly results of a Trump-packed court that made a political decision to deny millions of women across America their basic constitutional rights to privacy and their rights to healthcare. I have never seen a more devious denial of one’s constitutional rights,” Lee said in an interview with TheGrio.
Before the law went into effect, multiple clinics in Texas reported having full waiting rooms of patients seeking the procedure.
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