Tag Archives: abortion

When Texas’ restrictive new abortion law took effect last week, Texas Right to Life had already launched an anonymous abortion tip line called ProLifeWhistleblower.com, which asked people to submit reports revealing information about people who are facilitating abortions.

This was made possible by the new law’s strange mechanism that allows any person, even one outside the state, to sue any other person who either performs an illegal abortion or knowingly aids and abets an illegal abortion (including paying for it). The law defines illegal abortions as those performed past the point at which fetal heartbeat can be detected, around six weeks into pregnancy. (“Fetal heartbeat” is a somewhat fraught term, notes Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown, since it…

Under a recently passed Texas law, private citizens can sue anyone involved in helping a person receive an abortion in the state after the sixth week of pregnancy. In response, an anti-abortion group called Texas Right to Life set up a website designed to collect anonymous information about any alleged infractions. Or, at least, it tried to. So far, no company has been willing to host it.

The fate of prolifewhistleblower.com remains uncertain, and its absence from the internet does not negate the Texas law or its impacts. But in recent years, internet infrastructure giants have begun to draw blurry lines around who they’re willing to have as customers, a sometimes murky process exemplified by the travails of far-right social media network Parler. In contrast, prolifewhistleblower.com…

Troubles are mounting for a Texas website used to report violators of the state’s extreme anti-abortion legislation after the site was forced offline by two different web hosting platforms.

The site ProLifeWhistleblower.com was removed from its original web host by the provider GoDaddy on Friday before being suspended by its new host, an agency known for providing services to far-right groups.

A Texas anti-abortion group moved its online portal for snitching on abortions under the state’s extreme new law to a web hosting service known for working with far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists.

And it may go too far for even that provider.

Texas Right to Life, the evangelical Christian group behind the site, set up the online reporting operation to enforce the new “vigilante” law, which went into effect last week after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block it. The law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year, bans all abortions after six weeks — even in cases of rape or incest — before many people even know they’re pregnant.

But the reporting site was bounced last week by hosting provider GoDaddy for violating privacy policies barring users…