Dystopia in Action: The Deadly Outcomes from Texas’ Toxic SB 8
Over 9 million people moved to Texas between 2020 and 2022, a 16% growth rate as families flocked to the state after the global pandemic, lured by affordable housing and no state income tax.
Texas is also one of the most crypto-friendly states. Key political leadership in Texas understands blockchain and its applications outside of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. We’ll come back to this in the context of SB 8, the Texas anti-abortion legislation.
This post is a cautionary tale of the potential harm that could come from blockchain in the wrong hands. For a primer on what blockchain is and it’s unique tradeoffs, check out this post: From Democracy to Dictatorship: Using Politics to Understand “What Is the Blockchain Trilemma?
While our government’s drift toward authoritarianism is not pleasant to think about, it’s important for women to be strategic and informed. In this post we describe how blockchain could augment the worst parts of SB 8 and why it’s particularly risky in Texas.
On September 1, 2021, the Texas Legislature passed SB8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the United States. SB 8 prohibits abortions once cardiac activity can be detected in an embryo, which typically occurs around six weeks of pregnancy—often before many people realize they are pregnant. This restriction is significantly earlier than the fetal viability standard (around 24 weeks) set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. There are no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
SB 8 is one of the most toxic pieces of legislation in modern times. Why? Beyond the implications for women’s reproductive rights and health, it opens a door that pits citizens against women and their advocates, encouraging surveillance and vigilante enforcement. It’s an authoritarian approach that you might expect to find in China, Russia or Nazi Germany.
Not only does the six-week cutoff effectively ban most abortions in Texas, it offers monetary incentives for vigilante enforcement, encouraging citizens to spy on and sue each other.
SB 8’s Pandoras Box
SB 8 opens a Pandora's box precedent that could lead to grim implications for any group in civil society that the dominant power structure decides to oppose. This goes way beyond the abortion issue.
Take a look:
Vigilante Enforcement Mechanism: SB 8 does not rely on state officials to enforce the law. Instead, it allows private citizens to file lawsuits against anyone who "aids or abets" an abortion after the six-week mark, including medical providers, clinic staff, and even individuals who drive a patient to an abortion clinic.
This unprecedented enforcement approach was designed to avoid direct state enforcement, which made it challenging for courts to block the law, as there was no clear government entity to sue.
Monetary Incentives for Civil Enforcement: The law incentivizes private lawsuits by offering a minimum reward of $10,000, plus legal fees, to successful plaintiffs. This financial incentive has raised concerns about vigilante justice and the targeting of individuals who support abortion access.
The outcome is already tragically predictable. Several women have died trying to get care for failed pregnancies and miscarriages. Texas’s uninsured rate is 16%, double the national average. Maternal deaths in Texas increased 56% from 2019 to 2022. This compared with an 11% increase in maternal deaths nationwide during the same time period, in the wealthiest and most technologically advanced country on earth.
If we think that’s bad, unfortunately, it could get worse.
Texas conservatives support Bitcoin. Blockchain is the “ledger” system for Bitcoin. The primary cryptocurrency advocacy group in Texas is called the Texas Blockchain Council. Bitcoin is supposed to be bi-partisan, not so in the real world. TBC leadership is openly conservative.
The potential danger is that blockchain technology has many other uses outside of tracking cryptocurrency transactions. If Texas conservative leadership begins to connect the dots on CBDCs or a Texas crypto “coin”, they could greatly increase their control over the populace. Regarding SB 8 and other morality legislation, blockchain is a perfect vehicle for efficiently scaling a surveillance and vigilante reward effort. It can also be used to automate the ability to “out” people, similar to existing databases for sex offenders.
A Path Ahead
None of this is pleasant to contemplate, and I haven’t even touched on the potential risks and benefits of Artificial Intelligence in this scenario. Progressive leadership has not been smart about Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or blockchain. The answer is not to vilify blockchain, cryptocurrency, or any emerging technology.
The answer is to understand the power of these tools so we can advocate for regulation and use them appropriately. The bright spot is that blockchain, and AI can be used to support progressive efforts as well, but we have to get ahead of the curve in spaces women traditionally lag - tech, finance, and political representation.
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