prolifewhistleblower.com
- A new Texas law allows citizens to sue parties for involvement with abortions.
- Anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life launched a website where users can submit anonymous tips.
- Social media has been flooded with individuals implying that others should send fake tips.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
An anti-abortion Texas website has become the target of internet memes and spam after a restrictive abortion bill went into effect Wednesday.
The new Texas law bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as 6 weeks after conception. Wednesday evening, the Supreme Court decided not to intervene with the enforcement of the law in a 5-4 ruling.
Officially known as Senate Bill 8 or the "Texas Heartbeat Act," it allows private citizens to sue abortion providers as well as anyone they deemed to be "aiding or abetting" the process. If the plaintiff wins their case, they can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 and attorney fees, incentivizing citizens to patrol their neighbors' behavior.
Anti-abortion group Right to Life set up the website prolifewhistleblower.com in July, after the bill was first signed, that allows visitors to the site to post anonymous tips about potential subjects for enforcement, as Insider's Anna Medaris Miller first reported in August.
Online activists have been sarcastically encouraging others to send false tips to the line, potentially flooding it with false information. The Yellowhammer Fund, which "provides financial assistance to those seeking abortion care in the State of Alabama" according to its Facebook page, posted a link to the tip site before the law went into effect with the caption "what a shame it would be if people abused this tip line."
On August 23, TikTok user Victoria Hammett made a video for her over 747,000 followers saying "wouldn't it be so awful if we sent in a bunch of fake tips and crashed the site." The video went viral and has nearly 500,000 views. TikTok user williamshaughn_ posted a video of him sending 11 images of "Shrek porn" to the site which pulled in over 780,000 views since it was posted on August 21.
In two TikTok videos, activist and developer Sean Black demonstrated a tool that picks a random county in a Texas zip code and then submits the form every 10 to 15 seconds. The first video has over 700,000 views.
"There are people on TikTok using their platform to educate and do their part. I believe this is me doing mine," Black told Motherboard.
Twitter users continued this trend, adding more encouragement to those wanting to contact the site. Trial lawyer Matt Kearney tweeted "you should definitely not use a VPN to lodge fake tips." Other users flat out asked their supporters to help "crash this website."
-BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) September 2, 2021
-Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) September 2, 2021
On August 23, a post on the TwoXChromosomes subreddit with the headline "it would be a shame if we all made bogus tips, making the whole system useless," pulled in over 82,000 upvotes and hit the front page of the site on r/all.
Kimberlyn Schwartz, the director of media and communication at Texas Right to Life, told Spectrum News that the website has been flooded with "fake reports" and "ddos attacks" (where bots flood a site in order to overwhelm it or crash it).
Schwartz told Insider that the site blocks IP addresses of those "who spam the site," as The Daily Dot first reported.
Read more stories from Insider's Digital Culture desk.