GoDaddy will no longer host a site set up by the Texas Right to Life to collect anonymous tips about when the state’s new law banning almost all abortions was being violated.
Texas enacted a law that makes it illegal for anyone to help women get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy — and to exploit the new law, the right-wing extremist group Texas Right to Life wants citizens to report people at a dedicated “whistleblower” website, promising to “ensure that these lawbreakers are held accountable for their actions.”
However, it now looks like Texas Right to Life may have trouble keeping a home on the web, because hosting provider GoDaddy has given the group 24 hours to find a different place to park its website.
“We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service,” said Dan Race, a GoDaddy spokesperson.
The website promoted itself as a way to “help enforce the Texas Heartbeat Act,” since the Texas law allows private citizens to sue anyone who performs or assists in an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women even know they are pregnant.
On Thursday night, officials at GoDaddy informed the Texas Right to Life that it was violating the company’s terms of service and would no longer provide hosting, giving the group 24 hours to find another provider before going dark, according to Race.
In recent days, the tip line has been inundated with fake reports from TikTok and Reddit users who sought to overwhelm and crash the site with prank messages.
Portland, Ore.-based computer programmer Jonathan Díaz created an app, Pro-Life Buster, to generate fabricated stories that would be submitted at random times to the site. More than 1,000 made-up stories had been shared by users.
“It’s no one’s business to know about people’s abortions, and such a website is absolutely deplorable,” Díaz wrote. “This is why we’re pushing back.”
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas were granted a temporary restraining order against an anti-abortion group Friday, in the latest stage of the fight for abortion rights.
The order stops Texas Right to Life and associates from suing Planned Parenthood abortion providers and health care workers under Senate Bill 8, the abortion ban that went into effect in Texas this week that is the most restrictive abortion law in effect in the nation.
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