“Texas Right to Life is known for our fearless and unflinching commitment to advancing Pro-Life issues and candidates, whether it is popular or not,” Luke Bowen, then the political director of the powerful anti-choice organization Texas Right to Life, told Politico in 2018, adding, “It takes guts to challenge an incumbent, and we are proud to have supported all of our endorsed candidates who chose to go head-to-head with incumbents who failed to fight for Life when it was politically unpopular.”
Another thing Bowen apparently had a "fearless and unflinching commitment to" was trying to have sex with underage girls.
Last August, the 34-year-old forced-birth activist was arrested in a sting conducted by the Montgomery County Internet Crimes Against Children task force after sending pictures of his erect penis to an undercover detective he believed was a 13-year-old girl, asking her to send explicit pictures of herself to him and driving to what he thought was her home in order to have sex with her. Instead, he was arrested.
Bowen pleaded guilty last week to online solicitation of a minor and was sentenced to five years in prison. As far as we know, he did not try to claim that he was only going there because he was worried about her talking to strangers on the Internet.
Considering how the Right has been going on about "grooming" as of late, this should serve as an important reminder that this is what grooming actually is. It's not reading stories to children in libraries. It's not informing them of the existence of LGBTQ people. It's what this guy did or tried to do.
Texas Right To Life, the organization Bowen worked for, notably ran its own "criminal" catching enterprise on the Internet for some time — a website for people to report their friends, family members, neighbors, and co-workers for having abortions.
It bears mentioning that had Bowen not been talking to an undercover detective but to an actual child, if he went there that day and raped that child and gotten that child pregnant, she would have been forced to give birth to his child, likely against her will, as Texas does not have a rape exception. Texas Right To Life worked to make sure it doesn't and is currently campaigning to make sure it never does.
Screencap: Texas Right To Life article
Texas Right To Life may have fired Bowen after he was arrested, but the organization would still be thrilled to force a 13-year-old to have his baby.
Rape is a crime about power. Luke Bowen's entire career and extracurricular activities were about having power over women, about making women powerless. For a guy like that, forcing a 13-year-old to have his baby would have been a bonus. It would have been just one more way to exercise power over her and her body.
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