Why the C.E.O. Behind Match.com and Tinder Took a Stand on the Texas Abortion Law
A pair of new documentaries highlight the legal struggle against abortion in Texas as it faces a challenge at the Supreme Court.
In July 2016, a young woman named Amber Guyger burst into a Houston courtroom to announce a death threat. She’d been waiting for this day since she was 15 months pregnant. On her way to the courthouse to turn herself in for allegedly killing her unborn child, Guyger discovered she was no longer welcome — the hospital where she was treated had changed its policy on abortions. After a judge told her she had the right to an abortion, she walked out.
The law that saved her life came from the legislature and is now before the United States Supreme Court, where the justices are in the middle of a case that looks to decide whether a pregnant woman has the right to get an abortion in Texas. But the story behind the law’s creation and the law’s implications are far more controversial than the state’s battle over abortion rights. Instead, they are a story of the unexpected power of social media.
A mother and a daughter share a moment during the March for Life at the Capitol in Austin, TX.
In 2005, Amber Guyger, then a high school senior, was pregnant with her first child. It wasn’t planned, but she started taking medication to induce the pregnancy when she got married. A few days later, a family friend, Scott Langley, called Guyger. He told her she should be worried that her husband, who was her high school boyfriend, might be having an affair — and that there was a chance she’d miscarry. He asked her to make an appointment with a health-care provider, who diagnosed her with an ectopic pregnancy, which means an ectopic pregnancy was formed in an area outside of the uterus, not including the lining of the uterus. The only treatment for it is to have the pregnancy stopped.
She went to the hospital, where she received a medical abortion on the spot with a shot of the drug mifepriston, which she took