After abortion ruling, angry Texans call for secession—again

After the Supreme Court's 5-3 decision to strike down parts of Texas's restrictive abortion laws on Monday, familiar calls for the state to secede from the union spiked.

The #Texit hashtag was already in play this weekend following the Brexit vote, with thousands of independence-minded Texans, inspired by the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, tweeting their desire to return the Lone Star State to its Republic of Texas days. Between 1836 and 1845, Texas was a sovereign nation. Then it was annexed by the United States, which apparently never sat well with some people. And so we have #Texit.

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The law struck down by the court Monday was originally passed in 2013, and has gone through several lower court challenges. The bill, known as HB 2, required clinic doctors to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and the clinics themselves to meet the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers. Those requirements led to more than half of the states 40 clinics shutting, and could have closed all but around 10. Monday's ruling called HB 2 unconstitutional, saying the bill created an "undue burden on abortion access" and "place a substantial obstacle in the path of women seeking a previability abortion."

For Texans who resented the Supreme Court's decisions taking precedence over their own courts' and lawmakers', or for anti-choice Texans who disagreed with the Supreme Court making it easier for their neighbors to have access to abortions as promised in the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, this was just another reason to leave America for good.

According to a Vocativ analysis, in the hours before the SCOTUS decision came down, #Texit mentions were fairly low, fewer than a hundred per hour overnight (though, it should be said, this was overnight and a less active time overall). In the hour after the decision, however, the number jumped up to 924 tweets. That's not quite the peak #Texit that hit in the hour following the #Brexit announcement (1,745), but it's still a noticeable difference.

The Texas National Movement, a group dedicated to Texan independence, used Brexit to boost support for its cause—and the group has already posted about the SCOTUS decision on its Facebook page.

It wasn't all anti-choice advocates who turned to #Texit in the wake of the decision, however: There are tweets from people who are pro-choice (or at least, anti-Texas) applauding the Supreme Court decision and seeing a Texas secession as an added bonus.

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