Advertisement

Fact check: No, Texas doesn't have a hotline for reporting suspected abortions

Bayliss Wagner, USA TODAY
·5 min read
Fact check: No, Texas doesn't have a hotline for reporting suspected abortions

The claim: Texas doesn't have a hotline for suspected school shootings, but does have a hotline for reporting women entering Planned Parenthood

Soon after the shooting massacre of 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, some social media posts claimed that Texas had a hotline for reporting abortions but not one for school shootings.

"Texas doesn't have a hotline if you see a man go into an elementary school classroom with his AR-15, but it does have a hotline if you see a woman go into a Planned Parenthood parking lot with her car," reads a post from the Twitter account of satirical writer Andrew Bradley, who uses the alias Betty Bowers.

This post was shared on Twitter more than 43,000 times and on Facebook and other platforms hundreds and hundreds of times.

ADVERTISEMENT

"Pro-life my ass,'' wrote one Facebook user in a post of a screenshot of the tweet. The post was shared more than 350 times.

However, the tweet is not based in fact.

While there is not a dedicated phone number for reporting mass shootings, 911 is the ''hotline'' for reporting such emergencies, federal authorities said.

There is, however, no public or state-run hotline for reporting women who go to Planned Parenthood centers in Texas, according to our research.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

USA TODAY reached out to Bradley and users who shared his post for comment.

Abortion rights supporters rally at the Texas Capitol on May 14, 2022, in Austin, Texas.
Abortion rights supporters rally at the Texas Capitol on May 14, 2022, in Austin, Texas.

State has no abortion-reporting hotline, 911 for emergencies

In an email to USA TODAY, Bradley said the tweet's claim about Planned Parenthood refers to a website that Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, established last year to solicit tips from citizens about suspected illegal abortions. "I took some liberty in referring to it as a 'hotline,'" he wrote.

In 2021, a Texas law went into effect, making it illegal to terminate a pregnancy after a fetal heartbeat is detected. Still, only citizens are allowed to enforce the law. They can sue clinics or others who violate it. Police are prohibited from enforcing the law.

In response, Texas Right to Life set up ProLifeWhistleblower.com in July 2021, encouraging Texans to submit anonymous reports on people who could be sued under the law, including women, doctors and clinics.

The site went dark after a judge barred Texas Right to Life from suing Planned Parenthood over the abortion ban, CBS News reported.

While the anti-abortion group pledged to restore the site and continue collecting anonymous tips, it never went back up. Domain hosts such as GoDaddy.com dropped or refused to host the website because of policies against collecting private information about third parties without their consent, the Washington Post reported.

Currently, the domain redirects to the Texas Right to Life homepage.

USA TODAY didn't find any evidence that a public hotline for reporting abortions exists.

There is, however, evidence that pro-life groups may still be collecting information on women who enter Planned Parenthood and other clinics that provide abortions by taking photographs and recording license plate numbers, according to MIT Technology Review.

In a comment to USA TODAY, Bradley wrote that the content on his Betty Bowers Twitter account is "somewhat satiric," though he "strives to be truthful."

"The point I was making... (is that) Texas seems far more concerned with whether a woman goes to Planned Parenthood than if a young man enters a school with an AR-15," he wrote.

The second part of Bradley's tweet – that there is no hotline to report mass shootings – is also misleading. The National 911 Program, which is part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, confirmed to USA TODAY that Texas does have a "hotline" for reporting emergencies like a potential school shooting to police and other officials – 911.

"The number to call in Texas and across the United States to report any emergency is 911," wrote Lucia Sanchez, NHTSA's director of media relations. "A person entering a school with a gun would be considered an emergency."

Texans, like all Americans, can call 911 to get police, fire or emergency medical assistance, according to the program's website.

Fact check: Plan B still legal in Missouri as Supreme Court considers fate of Roe v. Wade

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Texas doesn't have a hotline for suspected school shootings but does have a hotline for reporting women entering Planned Parenthood. The number 911 serves as a hotline for reporting emergencies and would handle reports of an armed gunman entering a school, the National 911 Program said. Texas doesn't have a hotline for reporting women who enter Planned Parenthood.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: No Texas hotline for reporting women at Planned Parenthood