Texas’s new law that outlaws abortion after a fetal pole’s heartbeat can be detected, just ran into another roadblock in its enforcement. The legislature was clever in making the public responsible for enforcement so as to “avoid responsibility for its laws” as John Roberts says. But perhaps they were too clever because with this unprecedented scheme comes unforeseen challenges and questions.  Such as: how can would-be vigilantes notify the state about people who against all odds, decided to be in control of their own bodies and go through with an abortion beyond the 6 weeks or so that it takes to detect a heartbeat? Or, more specifically, how could the state collect the information without be fucked around with such that enforcement of the law is impossible? 

This is the reality on the ground at the moment, the website created to ‘blow the whistle’ on people carrying out their constitutional right to have an abortion, is fighting a war for basic effectiveness on 2 fronts.  On the one hand, there have been, valiant efforts to ratfuck the site itself with an avalanche of bogus tips. And on the other hand, the site is facing the prospect that no one wants to host such an abusive forum. First, they got kicked off of Godaddy for violating their terms of service, and also another host called Digital Ocean. Undeterred, they decided on a fool proof scheme: to go where rightwing white nationalist of all stripes are accepted: a webhost called Epik. Sites that are beloved by RWNJ like Parler and Gab along with others are hosted there. However, in a stunning turn of events, at this moment, Epik has kicked the site off as well (or more accurately disallowed them to collect people’s information- lest they be kicked off). As of now, Epik is still the site’s domain registrar, but when you try to go to their site, it redirects to Texas Right To Life site which isn’t taking any “tips”.

From Ars Technica: 

Even Epik says the Texas abortion “whistleblower” site violates its rules

JON BRODKIN - 9/7/2021, 1:43 PM

Epik general counsel Daniel Prince emailed Ars and other news organizations on Sunday, saying, "When the site owner moved it to Epik's name servers... we contacted the owner of the site, notified them that the website violated Epik's terms of use, and persuaded them to stop collecting anonymous tips and to take it off the Internet entirely. At no time did Epik serve as the web host for prolifewhistleblower.com."

In a move reminiscent of my high school days, the Texas group denies they are being dumped, and say they are the ones dumping Epik and looking for a new host for the site.

Texas group “exploring” options for domain

As previously noted, prolifewhistleblower.com still uses Epik as its domain registrar. Texas Right to Life spokesperson Kimberlyn Schwartz told Ars yesterday that "we're not being kicked off Epik" but suggested that the site will change to a new registrar. "We're exploring various long-term plans for the domain," Schwartz said.

When asked why Epik hasn't terminated the site's domain registration, Prince told us today that "the domain is not currently violating our terms of service by simply redirecting to the main page of Texas Right to Life. If that changes, we'll address it." Epik did not tell us which rule the site breaks, but a Daily Beast article said the "specific violation was reportedly the collection of information on third parties without their consent."

Texas Right to Life says the site will return. "For now, prolifewhistleblower.com is redirecting to texasrighttolife.com while we move hosts. It will be back up soon to collect anonymous tips," Schwartz told us.

This obviously isn’t going to solve the problems the GOP of Texas have callously created for women, and we do need aggressive action, but it is good for a laugh and a pause to enjoy some schadenfreude.