Neal Horsley, the militant anti-abortionist who gained notoriety by publishing the names and addresses of abortion clinic workers on the Internet, has launched his own ISP and Web-hosting business.
The Georgia activist set up We Choose Life Net to kill two birds with one stone: to create a virtual community of like-minded abortion protesters, and to provide himself with a steady income.
Horsley lost his job as a Web developer after The Wall Street Journal published an article revealing the name of his employer. He was fired over the negative publicity, he said.
"I was trying to assess my situation and realized we could appeal to abortion abolitionist people to convert from companies like AOL that aggressively support abortion," he said, signaling AOL Time Warner vice chairman Ted Turner's hefty cash grants to Planned Parenthood.
He plans to donate 25 percent of the company's profits to anti-abortion activities. Horsley said he has signed up 100 dial-up customers and 15 hosting clients since the company was launched last week.
His new business also enables him to host his own domains, which have been yanked 70 times by hosting companies skittish about his controversial content. His sites include the notorious Nuremberg Files, which posts the home addresses of abortion clinic workers, and Abortioncams.com, which publishes photos of women and workers entering and leaving family planning clinics.
Planned Parenthood lost a lawsuit attempting to ban the Nuremberg Files when the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the site was considered political speech and therefore covered by First Amendment protections.
"Now when someone sends us an e-mail complaining about my sites, we send them back a form letter that says we don't care what they think," Horsley said. "Their complaints are without merit."
He's partnered with Dwayne Coots, owner of Rovin.net, a niche ISP and hosting company that markets itself as "the ISP of the American Patriot Movement."
Likewise, Horsley's venture advertises itself as "The Internet Service Provider of the Abortion Abolition Movement" and the front door features a photo of an aborted fetus. "If Malachi could talk, he'd say 'Join them'" is printed around the gory picture.
