Kevin Williamson

Why Abortion Access Organizations Are Suing Anti-Choice Internet Trolls

Melanie Ehrenkranz
May 9, 2018

For grassroots pro-choice organizations, visibility is a double-edged sword. This was especially clear during the National Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon cyberattack two years ago. For the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF), which led the event, more visibility meant the potential to raise more money to help those in need of abortion access. It also made them a target of vitriolic anti-choice trolls.

During the 2016 Bowl-a-Thon, trolls pledged $66 billion in fraudulent donations, took down the fundraiser website with a DDoS attack, and created fake donor pages to phish for supporters’ personal information. Fake fundraising accounts included names like “qwerty,” “adolph hitler,” and “holifuk.” Forensics reports also indicate that ahead of the cyberattack, hackers placed malicious code on the fundraising website which allowed them to gather donors’ personal information and credit card details from a payment page, according to a complaint filed by NNAF.

continued: https://gizmodo.com/why-abortion-access-organizations-are-suing-anti-choice-1825514431

Fintan O’Toole: 8th Amendment demands punishment for women
Constitutional ban means Ireland too extreme even for mainstream social conservatives

April 30, 2018
Fintan O'Toole

I’m not sure people who want to defend the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution know how extreme their position is. Extreme, that is to say, not by the standards of those of us who always opposed it and would like it to be repealed, but even by the standards of mainstream social conservatism.

The Eighth is, in one crucial respect, on the lunatic fringe of anti-abortion activism. This is because, as has been made clear in recent years, it does not merely outlaw abortion in all but a very small range of circumstances. It does something else, something that most sensible conservatives regard as repugnant – it demands severe punishment for women who have abortions. There is no way around this: while the Eighth is in place, Ireland is committed to treating abortion, not just as a moral wrong, but as a crime more serious than, for example, child rape.

Continued: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-8th-amendment-demands-punishment-for-women-1.3479390

USA – Why Abortion Access Organizations Are Suing Anti-Choice Internet Trolls

Ireland – 8th Amendment demands punishment for women