Eric Gay/AP
- People are submitting phony claims to a Texas website that aims to penalize abortion providers.
- The website encourages citizens to report people who've helped someone get an abortion after 6 weeks.
- Texas's so-called "heartbeat ban," which is uniquely restrictive, is set to go into effect September 1.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Pro-choice advocates are spamming a Texas website that encourages people report abortions performed after six weeks of pregnancy – which, come September 1, will be illegal in the state.
The website calls on "citizens to hold abortionists accountable to following the law" by anonymously reporting providers or others who've "aided and abetted" an abortion after six weeks.
That includes parents who drive their child to the clinic or friends who lend money for the procedure.
Those found to have violated the law will be fined at least $10,000, the website says.
Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice organizations have fought against the law going into effect, but Twitter users are opposing it in another way: by aiming to overwhelm the website with an influx of bogus claims.
"Gosh, I wonder if they factored in people abusing the integrity of this system. Hmmm I hope ppl don't abuse this! That would be terrible," Nancy Cárdenas Peña, a Texas director for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, Tweeted Friday.
-Nancy Cárdenas Peña (@ncardenastx) August 20, 2021
She's since been banned by the website, she told the Daily Dot, but her idea has taken off, with other Twitter users saying they're flooding the site with "furry porn" and outrageous claims like trying to abort their 30-year-old children who've gotten "too big."
-sgt balls🏳️⚧️ (@sgtballsisback) August 21, 2021
No other states have such a clause
Texas's so-called "heartbeat ban," which passed in May, is uniquely restrictive because it limits abortions before most women even know they're pregnant and makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Its lawsuit clause, which doesn't require the reporter to have any connection to the person violating the law, is the first of its kind.
That's "very, very scary and could open the door to a lot of frivolous lawsuits," Dr. Bhavik Kumar, an abortion provider in Houston, previously told Insider when the law passed in May.
Indeed, experts say it could lead to "hundreds, even thousands" of lawsuits that could threaten abortion clinics, the Texas Tribune Reported.