(Part 3 of 3) I turned down the president of Students for Life for a debate — and then her student members came for me
SFLA spokesperson has made weaponizing victimhood an entire brand.
Picking up from Part 2 (read Part 1) of my “hot girl summer” of being doxed and harassed by student anti-abortion organization members and right-wing media, we last left off with the unethical student “journalist” Jacob Stewart who wrote an obvious smear piece and used it to try to incite violence against me. Woo boy!
Now, let’s dive into the second smear piece, which was — if you can believe it — even smarmier than the first one.
First some backstory: pandemic isolation and finding community online
At the beginning of the pandemic, the adult language school I was teaching ESL for downsized all of the teachers. Therefore, unemployed and quarantined, I found myself on Instagram a bit more, and it was then that I found a community of other abortion rights advocates.
In those early, heady days of isolation, we formed a group chat for support, but also for the purpose of reaching out for help with anti-abortion harassment and alerting each other to egregious lies by all sorts of anti-abortion accounts. We would then “rally the troops” and swarm the posts with factual information about abortion and some mockery of their bad memes and such to combat their widespread disinformation. I love our little online community.
Now, I confess to using “colorful” language at times, like calling out virgin teen boys who don’t even know what sex IS but yet disgustingly demanded intimate details about our reproductive organs and what we do with them. Again, I don’t care how old you are — you’re an abuser trying to remove human rights. A call for civility is a tool of the oppressor.
But, still, even I have lines I don’t cross. Unfortunately, sometimes there were things my fellow activists would say and do that I didn’t condone, like using homophobic or racial slurs and posting people’s family members and calling their workplaces. I feel that this unhinged and bad behavior should be reserved for forced birthers.
Unfortunately, because of the anonymity of many of the accounts, I got lumped in with them — it still happens today, in fact, even though I have tried to distance myself a bit in favor of focusing more on building my @theabortionfluencer platform.
This background is necessary to address some of the other baseless accusations levied against me by these anti-abortion students. Speaking of….
Felipe Avila: when victimhood and revenge become a personal brand
Because Catholic University student and Students for Life of America (SFLA) spokesperson Felipe Avila’s quotes are prominently featured in the second hit piece, I’m going to make the educated guess that he orchestrated it.
Avila and I go way back.
When I was swarming various anti-choice Instagram accounts with my repro rights community during early pandemic, one of them was Felipe’s baby, @teenprolifers.
But again, when it comes to the right-wing, a spade is not a spade, and this was not just a couple of “poor, innocent little teenagers” running a social media account. From their website:
TeenProLifers exists to amplify young, enthusiastic voices across the world as they champion the right to life. We are steadfast in empowering the youth of today through digital activism, legislative action, and election advocacy.
Since its inception, TeemProLifers [spelling mistake purposefully left in] has reached millions of teens and young adults online. Our TikTok account has amassed a large following with nearly 100,000 likes. Our talented volunteers have created over a thousand pro-life graphics and videos to engage our young audience.
· 20,000 followers across social media
· Over 90,000 likes on TikTok
· Over 70% of our Instagram followers are between 13-24.
One of TeenProLifers’ current “campaigns” is harassing an OBGYN physician who dispenses abortion pills, insinuating that she’s doing so nefariously (she’s not). They call on supporters to call her leasing company and harass them to end her contract, as well as post fake bad reviews of her on Google. These are despicable attacks on a person’s profession and livelihood.
This context is important to keep in mind as the whiny cries of “but we’re minors!” ensue when they get backed into corners.
All forced birther social media accounts are filled with horrendous disinformation, but I find TeenProLifers to be particularly insidious because they’re organized and indoctrinating kids at a young age, and they employ these targeted harassment campaigns against people and businesses.
That said, here’s a typical comment a couple years ago from one of my fellow repro rights advocates in an exchange with Avila when he was the president of the group:
This comment exchange also highlights the absurdity of accusing us of “harassing and bullying teenagers.”
After engaging their account and members for a few months or so in these types of exchanges, one day, I was on Felipe’s official spokesperson account, and I replied something innocuous to another person’s comment like Felipe was in favor of forcing women and little girls to give birth and doesn’t actually care about them at all.
I was shocked when all of a sudden, he replied by threatening my reputation and livelihood — something I never thought of doing to him.
This was 2.5 years ago. Take note of just how long he’s fanaticized about getting a smear piece published about me. He was extremely proud of himself for finally helping to make it happen.
He sent me the following at my LinkedIn account after the first smear piece was published:
Shit-posting is one thing; threatening someone’s livelihood takes it to a whole new level. Honestly, it took all I had not to retaliate and contact his associates in education and politics to see if they condoned such creepy, dangerous behavior. I opted to take the high road.
But I didn’t forget.
I did a little research on Avila, and it turns out he’s actually made being a victim into an entire brand.
Avila and Students for Life sues his high school — and scores some big conservative media wins
When he was still in high school, on September 29, 2022, Avila and other students from East Career and Technical Academy in Las Vegas sued their school district over allegations that they were being discriminated against for being “prolife” and that Avila was getting bullied and harassed online (isn’t that ironic?).
Lawyers from the Thomas Moore Society were only too happy to represent them and exploit the opportunity to cry about “free speech” for human rights abusers. You may have heard of them: they’re the conservative Roman Catholic law firm based in Chicago infamous for their anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion law suits—and oh, guess what? They also represented Lauren Handy the fetus corpse thief in her FACE Act violation trial.
From KTNV Las Vegas Channel 13:
“Another very distressing aspect of the entire situation is the school’s failure to address the bullying directed against the club’s founder and former leader, Felipe Avila, which further demonstrates the school’s antipathy toward the pro-life club’s message,” [Thomas More Society Special Counsel Joan] Mannix added. “He was stalked and threatened because of his pro-life views and leadership, but the school failed to take effective steps to address the bullying.”
“Stalked and threatened.” Interesting.
I obtained the following description of Avila’s bullying incidents by Thomas More Society lawyers from publicly available information at CourtListener.com:
Some of these comments are terrible, but keep in mind he is trying to remove the human rights of his fellow students, and he uses his victimhood to promote himself. I don’t condone it… but let’s say after what I’ve had to deal with personally, I understand.
Other comments aren’t even worth noting: “I’m going to get an abortion for you, Felipe” and “Felipe crying since I’m writing about abortion”? I was bullied mercilessly and threatened physically in 5th-7th grades in person — and I didn’t even hold any unpopular opinions that remove others’ rights. I just had the misfortune of being shy and the tallest girl in the school. My school failed me, too, but not once did I or my parents ever think to sue them.
And I was made stronger for it.
And that’s what’s wrong with these kids: they are so coddled by their parents, as well as propped up by bad actors on the Right who use them for propaganda and push a right-wing imperative on the rest of us. These kids learn they can be professional victims and leverage it with lawsuits whenever they get backed into a corner and can’t handle themselves.
But you know, I really feel for Avila. I do. It must be absolutely horrible to be stalked and threatened! … Ummm… you know, like he did to me. The following is him admitting as much in the second smear article about me:
That last part, though! No, I didn’t delete my account. Unlike him and his fellow attention-seekers, I simply blocked him and moved on after his creepy threats.
As I explained in the backgrounder, there were many repro rights people commenting to “underage pro-life students” on the TeenProLifer’s account. He targeted me. (It’s always okay when they do it, though.)
His lawsuit against his school was featured on several media outlets, including far-right propaganda machines Fox News and The Daily Mail, and hyped up by the Students for Life of America organization.
Thus, he officially made oppressor-victimhood his own personal brand.
When I started up my @theabortionfluencer Instagram account a year or so later, I made a couple posts about him in his official capacity as a “prolife” spokesperson — as I have done with many of these prominent voices in what I call “the Forced Birth Lobby,” whose entire lives revolve around weaponizing politics and the law to remove our bodily autonomy rights.
That one probably annoyed him, but it was the following post he really hated, as it was featured in both smear pieces. So naturally, I will repost it again:
Unsurprisingly, it was #4 that really got them all riled up, because S-E-X. (gasp) So, I’ll just let one of my friends who gave me permission to share her comment cover this one:
‘Nuff said.
Avila’s revenge fantasy from 2 1/2 years ago finally comes true
I apparently wasn’t sufficiently upset and silenced to their liking by the first smear piece.
I published the photo Jacob Stewart plastered all over his website on my Instagram so I could “meet” all my followers. I decided the best thing was to own it, and I doubled down on some of my stances they were mad about and reposted content that just point-blank exposed their lies. For example, like Stewart disingenuously pretending in his Collegiate Commons hit piece that U. of Chicago student Daniel Schmidt I posted about was a poor, little victim when he’s clearly a white supremacist, stochastic terrorist — platformed by several very large right-wing media companies and podcasts — who carried out his own cyber-harassment campaign to incite violence against and silence someone he didn’t like. (Are you seeing the pattern, yet?)
So as mentioned, my student cyber-harassers released a second hit piece a little less than a week later.
The second smear piece was clumsily written by “pro-life writer” Michaiah Bilger in a far-right publication called The College Fix, noted for such hard-hitting journalistic pieces as “Skirt-wearing male ASU professor scuffles with TPUSA members” (he was actually brutally assaulted and humiliated by them with a camera in his face, as they followed him around campus harassing him) and “Biden administration doles out $15 million to gender studies programs at universities in Middle East” (dear god, NOT GLOBAL GENDER EQUALITY ADVOCACY?! Terrifying that women should have rights.).
Bilger has worked for anti-abortion propaganda outlet LifeNews in the past, offering such similarly hard-hitting and totally factual journalistic gems as “Democrats Introduce ‘Kill More Babies’ Bill After Judge Blocks Abortion Pill” and “Planned Parenthood Celebrates Mother’s Day Even as It Kills Their Babies in Abortions.”
On her LinkedIn bio, she brags:
My writing has been quoted and shared by Ben Shapiro, the Washington Post, the Rev. Billy Graham’s Decision Magazine, federal lawmakers, conservative news outlets, leading pro-life organizations and even popular YouTube personalities like comedian JP Sears.
Yikes.
Well, again, she is right-wing media — we don’t really expect much. However, the level of shoddiness exhibited in her smear article about me puts even The National Inquirer to shame. First off, she claimed:
You know why I didn’t answer? Because on Facebook, my settings are such that I don’t get messages from people I don’t know. As much of a transparent hack as Stewart is, he at least tried other contact methods for his smear piece!
The truth for Bilger was much closer to, “I half-assedly contacted her through Facebook so I could feign journalistic integrity and didn’t bother to try any other methods because actually I don’t care — I write right-wing, inflammatory propaganda, silly, so facts and ethics never matter, and besides I hate women like you. So, duh!”
You know how I know that last part? Because, like Stewart, it wasn’t enough to write a hit piece — she had to really try to punish me for supporting women in their medical decisions and calling out their anti-abortion lies and nonsense. Read on.
Craven smear campaign, part deux
Let’s start out with the pathetic and silly and lead up to the insidious and defamatory, shall we? Bilger claims this is how I describe myself on my Medium bio:
And here’s what my Medium bio actually says:
And I don’t mention my age. I’m sure she read that I’m 49 in Stewart’s smear piece, but it’s more fun to say I’m 50 — because ageism!
Of course, she also had to highlight that I had an abortion, as that further solidifies for their readership what a “degenerate whore” I am. Here’s a bit she left out about the anti-abortion harassment that day, though (because it shows yet again that forced birthers are absolutely deranged):
I did have to endure anti-abortion harassment outside the clinic — lunatics screaming over a 12-foot wall they scaled with ladders.
Now, that level of insanity takes commitment!
I’m calling attention to this next part, because I’m pleased Bilger gave me an opportunity to educate people about the not-so-pretty aspects of birth, which make it clear that no one should ever be forced into it by the State. (As a fellow childfree-by-choice friend once said, “if they didn’t lie about childbirth, no one would do it.”)
I did call out Colton and say that, because GROSS. Why do his parents let him troll grown women’s uteruses and talk about their personal reproductive business on Instagram? These kids need more parenting and less social media.
Maybe Colton learned something before he blocked me. ← You know, because that’s what you do if you don’t want future interactions on social media. Colton may have weird hobbies, and be grossly intrusive and ignorant about childbirth, but at least he’s not a clout-chasing attention-seeker like these Students for Life and PAAU Now “Public Figures.”
More absurdity from Bilger:
Ummm… are you TRYING to make me look like a badass?! Thanks!
Now let’s transition into Bilger’s more malicious intent. Like Stewart, she purposefully misidentified my profession as “educator” and “teacher,” as well:
Again, in the midst of the Right’s fascistic culture war, Bilger knew she had a much greater chance of inciting harassment and violence against me from her right-wing readers if she labeled me a “liberal teacher” rather than “editor and writer,” which is my actual profession.
If this wasn’t smarmy enough, she used an underhanded rhetorical technique to insinuate I committed actual crimes I didn’t commit:
OK, before we get into it, first I’d like to show you what a “frequent target of Luckett” actually looks like for SFLA spokesperson Lydia Taylor, whom this is referring to.
In addition to me calling her out for blatantly grooming elementary school kids at her church, which I mentioned in Part 1, here I call attention to her amazing faux-aggrievement grifting skills — claiming without evidence that prochoice activists slashed her tire, and then fundraising off of it:
I also called for my followers to donate to the Carolina Abortion Fund in her name a couple times. The horror!
Oh, Colleen, don’t be silly… Bilger didn’t say you were behind Lydia’s rape threats and tire slashing. Oh, don’t be naive, dear reader. Check out some of comments on the website under the article:
Why, indeed? (We know why.) And if those aren’t enough, here’s this dude on Twitter who makes it exceedingly clear:
Just as Stewart knew exactly what he was doing when he tagged LibsofTickTok on Twitter, so, too, did Bilger with her libelous insinuations. Of course, I can’t get Twitter to remove this retweet that could incite cyber-harassment at the least and violence at worst.
Now, I hate to break it to you, kiddos, but the First Amendment doesn’t protect defamation.
And if my life or the lives of my family and husband ever end up in danger because of what Stewart and Bilger did, you better believe they’ll be hearing from the authorities. Other lefties have been murdered for far less because of increasingly dangerous and inflammatory right-wing rhetoric.
Rising from the ashes, stronger (and smarter)
One last thing in the anti-abortion college student harassment saga to mention: because their attempts to incite more harassment and violence and smears and doxing me, my workplace, my Mom and her business weren’t enough, one of them also sent both articles to three department emails at my company asking if the views of my company matched mine.
My company had my back, of course. But these cyber-harassing criminals did their best to also get me fired.
Yep! All this (and this) because some privileged college kids were mad they didn’t get to advocate for suffering and removal of human rights unencumbered on Instagram.
I hope it’s crystal clear by now that these anti-abortion goons are far from the innocent victims they pretend to be.
But despite their best efforts, I’ve emerged better and even more focused on championing reproductive rights in the wake of their clown show rollercoaster ride.
They won’t silence me. On this, I wholly agree with Felipe Avila in The Fix hit piece:
Oh wait, here he is in The Collegiate Commons hit piece, too:
He’s got that media talking point DOWN, yeah? (I always love how right wingers in this country whine about being “silenced” or “canceled” — on large public platforms. Such insidious propaganda.)
I needed to write these response articles to flip the script on their defamatory nonsense and manage my reputation. I hope it has been as cathartic for my readers as it was for me! ;-)
But to answer the several inquiries about this, no, I won’t be taking any legal action at this time. I’m pretty sure I have a good case of targeted, malicious, criminal cyber-harassment with intent to harm — if not defamation — and I have a lawyer who already agreed to help, but I don’t have the interest, time, or energy for going up against shady and well-funded Thomas More Society lawyers for months on end.
And unlike these professional faux-victims, I don’t wear it as a badge of honor, so I’m moving on. I’ve got stuff to do!
I want to leave this on a positive note, so I thought I’d share with you this one lone supportive comment among all the hate. In times like these, it’s always nice to find an unlikely ally. Thanks, Doggo. :-)
If you are also being cyber-harassed/-stalked by right-wing abusers, there’s help available. First, document EVERYTHING. I can’t stress that enough. And don’t alter your screenshots.
Then go to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and start there. Good luck! You are not alone.
Colleen Luckett has an extensive background in publishing, content development, and marketing communications in various industries, including healthcare, education, law, telecommunications, and energy. Currently, she is a writer and editor by profession, holds a Master’s degree in Multilingual Education and teaches English as a Second Language to adult students on the side, and in her spare time her writing on Medium covers the contentious political and medical battleground surrounding reproductive rights in the United States. You can also find her informative (and sometimes spicy!) posts on Instagram at @theabortionfluencer.
