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Supreme Court observers were shocked when someone within the institution leaked a draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn Roe v. Wade. The unprecedented move may have violated every norm within that hallowed cloister, but anyone familiar with the contentious debate over abortion did not bat an eye. The scandal of a leak pales in comparison to what followed: the exposure of the Justices' personal information online and threats that reportedly led Alito and his family to go into hiding. It was only a matter of time before the Court would suffer through what has been the norm for pro-life activists for some time.
It does not matter that the Dobbs case has not yet been settled; abortion supporters have shown they will act preemptively to intimidate and silence their opponents. The unrest that followed the leak—including an alleged arson attack at a Wisconsin pregnancy center serving women and threatened disruption of Catholic masses—is a preview of what is to come. The intimidation campaign will not just play out in the public square, but in the digital realm as well. While Americans can rely on the police to intervene to safeguard their rights in the former, they may be on their own in the latter.
The institutions charged with safeguarding data and free speech have abdicated that duty, and even encouraged online assaults against abortion opponents.
Hours before state legislators passed a law cracking down on the willful termination of unborn human beings, Texas Right to Life, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping young mothers and their children, found itself under attack. It was not just the usual mix of protesters or activist journalists—the pro-life group has dealt with those types for decades—but a coordinated campaign from big business and online trolls whose sole goal was to silence and intimidate pro-life Texans into abandoning the unborn.
Hackers took over the Texas Republican Party's website in retribution for the state's abortion law. Others accessed the personal information of teenagers who had the audacity to apply for internships to serve pregnant women through Texas Right to Life—and then Tweeted about it. In the days that followed, tech companies sided with them. GoDaddy terminated its relationship with Texas Right to Life, following in the footsteps of Amazon Web Services (AWS) which months earlier had kicked a conservative social media startup off its servers because of a public pressure campaign.
The volunteers at Texas Right to Life ignored the keyboard warriors and the spineless sweatshirt warriors of Silicon Valley, and went back to the hard work of serving the poorest and most vulnerable human beings in America. Finding a new web server should have been a walk in the park. They did not realize the stranglehold that the likes of GoDaddy and AWS have on the industry, or the willingness of hubristic tech giants to let their politics drive their business practices.
Texas Right to Life would have been at the mercy of Silicon Valley were it not for a tech startup that had both the capability to safeguard the group's data and a commitment to the freedom of speech. Pro-lifers found a new online home at RightForge, a full-service web company founded to offer an escape from the mob mentality.
There are still a few power players committed to the First Amendment (as Elon Musk's Twitter bid makes clear), but unless online architecture itself is rooted in a commitment to free speech even the world's richest man is vulnerable to censorship. Even if Musk is successful in overcoming the social media giant's culture of suppression, there is nothing to stop GoDaddy, AWS or other web giants from pulling the plug.
The censorious atmosphere that pervades the industry is a direct product of the near monopoly control that tech giants enjoy. They no longer see themselves as pillars of free speech, but conduits of power politics, confident that their clients have nowhere else to turn to if they do not conform to the whims of billionaire oligarchs.
The women at Texas Right to Life—the vast majority of its volunteers are women—have never taken the easy road. They refused to bow to the demands of the mob or its enforcers in Silicon Valley. They accepted that there would be a price to pay; they were subjected to the attacks of ruthless men—for nearly all hackers are men—and the indifference of the companies they trusted to protect them. Their associated website was offline for only a few hours before RightForge reached out and offered the same safe haven Texas Right to Life has provided to tens of thousands of women and children over the years.
The attacks soon quieted, and the hackers and oligarchs turned their attention to the next object of hate. The leak of Alito's draft has given the Supreme Court and American society a preview of what pro-lifers can expect if justices overturn Roe. The difference is, Texas Right to Life is prepared for what comes next.
Elise Rhodes-Pierotti is senior vice president at RightForge, and the former chief marketing officer at Parler.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
