GoDaddy takes down abortionreporter.org

GoDaddy has notified the owners of abortionreporter.org that it will refuse to provide them with registrar and web hosting services, and has given them 24 hours to move to a different provider. Without going into details, GoDaddy's vice president of public relations, Dan Race said the site was violating the terms of service, according to The Domains. And this, perhaps, was putting it mildly; in fact, abortionreporter.org’s business model is striking in its cynicism.

In early September the state of Texas enacted an abortion law that bans abortion once a heartbeat is found in the fetus, usually around six weeks, when most women don’t even know they are pregnant. Moreover, the law makes it possible to sue abortion providers and individuals that provide assistance. The law raised a storm of protests, but the US Supreme Court found no reason to overturn it.

The abortionreporter.org domain was registered on September 7, several days after the law came into force. The website invited users to report any violations of the abortion law, explicitly notifying users that the information received would be transferred to the “interested organizations, which may or may not take measures they deem necessary.” At the same time, in order to file a report, users were charged a $20 fee, which means that the creators wanted to charge whistleblowers to whistleblow! No further comment is needed.