A police bomb squad was called in to investigate a “suspicious package” delivered to the doorstep of a Houston, Texas pro-life group on Friday.
The Bellaire police department received a call about a “suspicious package” dropped at Texas Right to Life’s office in Houston and escalated the concern to the bomb squad, which sent agents to the scene, Fox 4 News reported. All personnel were evacuated from the office building.
The threat was determined to be a false alarm after authorities’ x-rayed the package and found no contents that could pose any danger. The local police department will continue to probe the situation, and officials noted to Fox 4 News that making a bomb threat qualifies as a “terroristic threat,” a criminal offense which can earn a sentence of up to a $4,000 fine and nearly a year in jail.
“Texas Right to Life did the right thing in contacting the police. It was fortunate that our officers were on scene when the suspicious package was delivered and we appreciate the occupants of the building working with police to quickly clear out in the event that this was an actual bomb,” the Bellaire police wrote in a press release.
After the incident, Texas Right to Life tweeted a request for prayer. “Praise God, the item was NOT a bomb, and all of our employees are safe. Please continue to pray for the wellbeing of our staff,” it read.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss review of a Texas law which prohibits abortions once a heartbeat is detected, Texas Right to Life faced physical threats and cyber attacks on its employees and web infrastructure, Bellaire police chief Onesimo Lopez told National Review last week.
After Texas Right to Life created a whistleblower website to support the law’s implementation, through which any individual could anonymously report doctors or any one else who knowingly performs or aids an illegal abortion, pro-abortion activists used the tip-line to threaten staffers at the organization.
While some threats targeted employees’ home addresses and other personal information, others attempted to take down the internal network by overloading the system so it would crash, vice president of Texas Right to Life Elizabeth Graham said.
The Supreme Court’s ruling, which allowed the Texas law to go into effect, therefore making abortions after six weeks illegal, has angered the pro-abortion movement, which believes the measure is a violation of a woman’s bodily autonomy enumerated in Roe v. Wade.
Source: National Review
