AUSTIN, Texas — A billboard truck with video messages and art about abortion rights is making the rounds around Downtown Austin as part of an effort to highlight the effects of anti-abortion laws across the country and in Texas.
Some of the messages include, "You traveled to Texas for SXSW, but some Texas counties are trying to stop people from traveling out of the station for an abortion," and "Big tech is fueling abortion surveillance. Tell tech to stop harvesting our data."
The truck is part of a series of events put together for South by Southwest (SXSW) by several pro-abortion rights organizations, including Plan C, Fight for the Future, Project for Empty Space and Women on Web.
Martha Dimitratou, a digital strategist for Plan C, said big tech companies such as Google are complicit in restricting access to resources and promoting anti-abortion advertisements.
"There is a lot of information that people are searching that is either taken down, and we know that there is a lot of anti-abortion, fake clinics content that is, you know, still available on Google," Dimitratou said. "Tech [companies] should really do a better job at understanding that they have a really big role to play in abortion access in the state and everywhere."
KVUE reached out to Google for a comment, but we have not heard back yet.
Rebecca Pauline Jampol, a co-creator of Body Freedom for Every(Body), pointed to what she said was the importance of creating a safe space and bringing forward the issues attached with abortion access on a wider scope.
"Abortion is so stigmatized and it absolutely should not be. And here is a community that is a safe community and shows that abortion is OK," Jampol said. "We believe that art and artists play a large role in this discussion, and so our organization in this initiative, Body Freedoms for Everybody, is promoting the work of artists that are thinking about reproductive health care, thinking about gender-affirming rights and using their work to create expressions around it.
Anti-abortion laws in Texas have triggered protests and lawsuits. President Joe Biden denounced the ban entirely during his State of the Union address, which was attended by Kate Cox, a Dallas woman who traveled outside of the state to get an abortion.
The truck will circle the downtown area until March 11, when a SXSW panel will discuss the global impact of the roles big tech companies play when it comes to information. The panel will be held from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Messages from the truck created by the Austin-based company Essentials Creative were also projected on the walls of buildings across the city and will be on display until March 13.