On Wednesday, Sept. 1, a Texas law banning nearly all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy went into effect. The Supreme Court declined to block the law, making Texas the most restrictive state in the nation in regard to abortion procedures.
The ‘Texas Heartbeat Bill’ bars abortion procedures once cardiac activity can be detected from the embryo, which typically occurs around the sixth week of pregnancy. Since women do not usually know their period is late until the fourth week of pregnancy, this law allows around two weeks for women to obtain a pregnancy test and an abortion. This law does not make any exceptions for rape or incest. Medical professionals have questioned the ethics of such a restrictive law, especially because there are seven million women of child-bearing age in Texas who may be impacted by this Supreme Court decision.
What has the conversation been like on social media? At the Social Media Listening Center, we used a search for keywords “Texas” and “Abortion,” “Ban” and “Abortion,” and “Abortion” and “Healthcare.” While this is not a fully extensive search, it provides a glimpse into the online conversation.
On Sept. 1, when the news was first announced, the search found more than 554,000+ tweets discussing this topic. By Sept. 4 at 11:59 pm, the search found 905,799 mentions across all platforms. Unsurprisingly, the sentiment of this search was 96.2% negative and 3.8% positive. To get a better look at the conversation, we paid close attention to the word cloud capturing the most common words and phrases associated with this search:
To gain even further understanding of the sentiment surrounding this breaking news, we looked at the most commonly used hashtags related to this search. We found that #sb8, #bansoffourbodies, #scotus, and #roevwade are at the top. When searching the keywords “Texas” and “Abortion,” we found that some of the top themes of discussion the day the news was announced were “SB 8,” “Abortion Rights,” “Women,” and “Supreme Court.“
Unsurprisingly, this topic is especially resonating with female users in the United States within the 18-35 age bracket. Female users have also posted about this topic nearly twice as much as their male counterparts. Top influencers on Twitter include Mark Joseph Stern, CNN, President Biden, and Hillary Clinton.
BREAKING: By a 5–4 vote, with Roberts joining the liberals, the Supreme Court REFUSES to block Texas' six-week abortion ban.
Opinions here: https://t.co/elazEg3xdZ
— Mark Joseph Stern is on parental leave! (@mjs_DC) September 2, 2021
A Twitter thread by Mark Joseph Stern, a staff writer for the online magazine Slate, was retweeted by over 10K users. President Biden also spoke out against Texas’ decision on Twitter prior to a formal briefing statement released by the White House, describing the law as “a blatant violation of the right established under Roe V. Wade.”
Texas SB8 will impair women's access to health care and, outrageously, deputizes private citizens to sue those they believe helped another person get a banned abortion.
It's a blatant violation of the right established under Roe V. Wade. We will protect and defend that right.
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 1, 2021
The keyword search also revealed that Reddit users are engaging in the r/Politics, r/Libertarian, r/Christianity, and r/Law subreddits. One of the most popular posts in r/Politics pointed out that Texas citizens are now allowed to carry a gun in public without a permit but cannot lawfully terminate a pregnancy. As of Sept. 2 at 3 pm, this post had received 3.3K upvotes and 600+ comments.
The online conversation is likely far from over. Since the Supreme Court has declined to block this law, it’s likely that other conservative states, such as Georgia and Alabama, will move to pass similar laws. As protests in Texas and lawsuits in state court continue to unfold, this topic will probably continue to trend for weeks to come. In the meantime, we’ll continue to monitor this topic and others from the Social Media Listening Center.
Author: Kendall Phillips
