A growing number of companies, from American Airlines to Match and Uber, have spoken out against Texas’ restrictive new abortion law

• The business world is speaking out against a new Texas law banning abortions after six weeks.
• Lyft, Uber, and Match are among the companies taking action against SB8, or the “heartbeat bill.”
• The CEOs of Bumble and Match Group called the law “regressive.”
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Companies are speaking out against Texas’ harsh new anti-abortion law.

The Senate Bill 8 in Texas, nicknamed the “Heartbeat Bill,” bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy – which is before many women realize they are pregnant – even in the case of incest or rape.

It specifically allows private Texas citizens to report and personally sue anyone they think is seeking an abortion, as well as anyone helping them.

The Supreme Court ruled not to block the Texas law.

Here are the business world players taking action against the new legislation.

GoDaddy shut down an anti-abortion website

Gizmodo wrote about the website, which was registered to GoDaddy and created by an anti-abortion group called Texas Right to Life for people to report on others who were seeking abortions.

The company tweeted Friday that it told the website’s owner “they have violated GoDaddy’s terms of service and have 24 hours to move to a different provider.”

-GoDaddy (@GoDaddy) September 3, 2021

Texas Right to Life spokesperson told CNN that the organization “will not be silenced” and “if anti-Lifers want to take our website down, we’ll put it back up.”

Dallas-based Match Group called the law ‘regressive’

The dating app company owns Tinder and Hinge, and its CEO – Shar Dubey – is a Texas resident who immigrated from India 25 years ago. She wrote in an internal memo that she is “shocked” to “live in a state where women’s reproductive laws are more regressive than most of the world.”

The CEO also said she’s creating a fund for Match employees that are affected by Texas’ new abortion law to seek healthcare out of state.

“I’m not speaking about this as the CEO of a company,” Dubey wrote. “I’m speaking about this personally, as a mother and a woman who has fervently cared about women’s rights, including the very fundamental right of choice over her body.”

Bumble created a fund for Texas women to access abortions

The dating app company said in a tweet last week that it had started a relief fund for proceeds to go to organizations that support women’s reproductive rights.

CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said in a tweet that her $6.6 billion company was “women-founded and women’ led” and that it would “keep fighting against regressive laws like #SB8.”

American Airlines is against the new law

A company spokesperson told Reuters that the Texas-based airline “hoped for a different outcome for this legislation, and we’re disappointed by the result.”

Uber and Lyft said they will pay legal fees of drivers that get sued

Texas’ abortion law forbids anyone to transport a woman to receive an abortion after six weeks, which could affect drivers of ride-sharing companies.

Lyft said it created a Driver Legal Defense Fund to completely front the costs that drivers could incur under the new law.

“Drivers are never responsible for monitoring where their riders go or why,” Lyft said Friday. “Imagine being a driver and not knowing if you are breaking the law by giving someone a ride. Similarly, riders never have to justify, or even share, where they are going and why.

“Imagine being a pregnant woman trying to get to a healthcare appointment and not knowing if your driver will cancel on you for fear of breaking a law,” the company said. “Both are completely unacceptable.”

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi shared Lyft cofounder Logan Green’s pledge on Friday and tweeted that “drivers shouldn’t be put at risk for getting people where they want to go” and that Uber will also cover legal fees of its drivers.

-dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) September 3, 2021