BOUNTY HUNTING SEASON OPENS IN TEXAS

Senate Bill 8, a recently adopted Texas law. bans abortions starting around the sixth week of pregnancy, well before most women even realize they are expecting. While the intent of the legislation is to terminally restrict a woman's right to an abortion, it is designed to strategically sidestep "Roe v. Wade" by evading judicial review, shifting its enforcement from state authorities to the public, and deputizing ordinary citizens to do this. The law establishes a bounty system in which vigilante plaintiffs are allowed to sue anyone involved in performing abortions, and give them a financial incentive to do so. The statute offers a "cash prize" of at least $10,000 plus legal fees, with no requirement to pay the defendant's legal expenses if the suit is unsuccessful. Prospective complainants are not limited to suing the medical staff involved in the procedure, they could include family members, cab drivers and other facilitators as well. They don't even need to be Texas residents. As kids growing up during the decade immediately following World War II, being properly indoctrinated into a democratic mindset, we knew that this method of social control was generally employed by totalitarian regimes. The evidence was overwhelming that autocratic authority depended significantly on citizens enforcing state edicts by informing on each other. As the Nazis worked to consolidate their power and build a cohesive "national community," suppression of dissent played a key role. In 1933 they issued a directive that required Germans to turn in anyone who spoke against the party, its leaders, or the government. Those implicated tended to end up in special concentration camps for retraining or termination. Informants used compliance to help advance their standing in the Nazi hierarchy. Similar processes were developed during the war in Nazi occupied territories, especially when focused on the genocide of European Jews. In The Netherlands, around 1943, when the occupiers had trouble fulfilling their quota of Jewish captives, they inspired teams of "Jew hunters" who were paid Fl.7.50 per Jewish citizen turned into the German authorities. Greedy people talked and between 8,000 and 9,000 who had previously eluded capture were discovered and transported to extermination camps. (Ad van Liempt, "Kopgeld: Nederlandse Premiejagers op Zoek Naar Joden," 1943) In Poland, Jan Grabowski, in his book "Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German Occupied Poland," concluded that in his country "the great majority of Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal. They were denounced or simply seized, tied up and delivered by locals to the nearest station of the Polish police, or the German gendarmerie." Consequently, an estimated 200,000 Polish Jews that might have escaped otherwise ended up in termination camps. In the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin's regime relied heavily on "mutual surveillance," urging families to report on each other and report "disloyalty." Many of the more than 14 million people that ended up in the Gulag were incarcerated as a result of "accusations" from neighbors. (Orlando Figes, "The Whisperers," 2007). In East Germany, the Stasi, its official state security service, depended largely on ordinary people to report activity that deviated from the government's political ideology. In a country of 16 million, 620,000 people worked undercover to help the country keep its people in check. Multiple other countries like Cuba, China, the Phillippines, Myanmar and others used similar means of social control. Although we are often tempted to exclude ourselves from these Orwellian systems of surveillance and censorship, supported by forcibly or enticingly indoctrinated mass attitudes, we should acknowledge similar developments in our own past. During the Salem witch trials (Feb 1692 - May 1693), as hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, more than 200 people were identified and accused by community members of being witches. Thirty were found guilty, and 19 were executed by hanging. It was virtually impossible to disprove charges of witchcraft, and defendants were convicted with no evidence, predominantly on the basis of observations by neighbors. The Red Scare of 1917-1920 and the McCarthy inquisition between 1950 and 1954 saw many accused, blacklisted and losing their jobs, although most in fact did not belong to the Communist Party. The frenzy unleashed by the Bolshevik revolution towards the end of World War I, was fueled by fear. In 1918 we passed the Sedition Act, which criminalized many forms of speech. It became illegal to use disloyal language, printed or spoken, about the government. President Harry Truman picked up on this same tenet when he instituted federal loyalty programs after World War II. These regulations opened the doors to unrestricted public snitching. Senator McCarthy took advantage of this when he interrogated accused Communists, whose names were provided by misguided patriots. Many reputations, careers, and livelihoods were unnecessarily lost during that sordid time in our history. After the September 11 attacks, the statement: "If you see something, say something," was readily recognized as an essential weapon in the war on terror. In 2011 Congress past a law that grants immunity from civil liability to persons acting in good faith when reporting suspicious activity. It is great to feel you can trust that everyone will do the right thing. But however well intended, this act also opens us up to substantial abuse. In the process of seeing this through, hundreds of individuals of middle eastern descent have been rounded up on unsubstantiated charges from informers fueled by fear and ignorance. It might well be premature to associate the Texas legislation with the excesses experienced in the mid-20th century European theater. But we do have our own history to consider as well. Over time, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people and careers would have survived if snitches, cowardly greedy informants and pseudo-patriotic citizens had decided not to follow through on bounty promises and surveillance mandates. By adopting this law, Texas kicked the door to abuse again wide open. One of the significant components of a healthy democracy is the rule of law. It seeks to treat all persons fairly and equally. SB8 incorporates an extra-legal vigilante system - without recourse for the accused, and no legal consequences for the accuser. individuals who file lawsuits under this law don't even need to claim legal standing. "Texas Right To Life," the biggest anti-abortion organization in the state, already set up a whistleblower website where anyone can unanimously leave tips about suspected illegal abortions. Moreover, this degenerative autocratic pandemic is rapidly spreading. As of early September, at least 7 other GOP controlled states are considering replicating this Texas law. It is disappointing, and indeed disturbing, that, in a country long established as the preeminent defender of democracy, a legislature dominated by a single political party feels the need to adopt autocratic principles to pursue its agenda and cement its power position. Theo Wierdsma