Texas’ legislative session doesn’t start until January. But Republicans are frothing at the mouth to make abortion somehow even less accessible. Last week, lawmakers filed two key anti-abortion bills: one inspired by Louisiana’s law that reclassifies the pills as dangerous “controlled substances” without any basis, except to further restrict them, and another that would ban internet providers from hosting the websites of abortion funds or sites that offer any information on abortion, including abortion pills. Mind you, this is a state that already imposes a total ban that threatens abortion providers with life in prison.
Texas Republicans also introduced the “Women and Child Safety Act,” a 41-page bill that would allow citizens to sue internet service providers for at least $10,000 if they host pro-abortion rights websites. The bill seems modeled, in part, after Texas’ SB 8, the state’s six-week abortion ban from 2021 that’s enforced by civil lawsuits. Eerily enough, the new Texas bill specifically identifies abortion funds and websites that offer information on abortion pills. It names sites like Plan C Pills, Aid Access, and Hey Jane, which help people get medication abortion by mail.
How would they even enforce this if the site is hosted in a different state or even country? Not like Texas laws have jurisdiction outside of Texas.
How would they even enforce this if the site is hosted in a different state or even country?
you’re asking a question they don’t care about, which is the first problem here. the purpose is not to have a legally bulletproof regulation, but to cast doubt on the ability of websites like this to operate in Texas without incurring liability and thereby force them to block users from the state or another such action. this is also how most abortion restrictions work in practice: they muddy the water on what is legal, so risk-averse entities or entities without the revenue to fight back simply avoid doing/facilitating the practice in a given jurisdiction or completely move out of state.
is this dubiously legal? yeah, obviously. but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the money to pay a lawyer. and the vast majority of these sorts of websites obviously don’t–they’d likely need someone to represent them pro bono, which is not likely.
Very true. That being said there are a lot of progressives in the country as well and some progressive states, or stores/institutions in those states, that would stand up to something like this. And I doubt ISPs would be ok with states trying to ban things like this because it would be very costly and not at all feasible to implement. So hopefully this doesn’t really affect online access to healthcare.
Of course then there’s the very real possibility that Trump will replicate this kind of enforcement at a federal level. It’s scary to think about but also a very real possibility. I feel bad for women in America and what’s going to happen to them in the next 4 years.
It’s not costly to implement a blacklist.
It very much is. Networks don’t work on geographical borders. ISP censorship on a state level would be a nightmare to implement for a specific state without impacting users in a different state. On top of it the government would have to maintain a specific list of IPs they want banned given how easy it is to spin up a new website on a different IP. It’s not impossible, but it would be a nightmare to implement.
An ISP is absolutely going to be able to differentiate location based on public IP. They assign blocks of IPs to geographic locations for use with DHCP in that region. You can go to whatsmyip.com and see your geographic location yourself.
There are practical examples of this that you likely experience every day. Steam has geographic restrictions and pricing based on location, streaming services geolock their offerings, etc.
Geo based IP doesn’t always apply and it’s more in line for a region than say something like a state. Sure there’s some overlap, but you’re going to also have a lot of misses.
it’s unclear how many votes either of these measures would have, but once session begins next year there’s really no check besides themselves (and maybe a lower-level court) for what Texas Republicans can pass.
