Prudish even by the standards of the Victorian Age, Anthony Comstock ranks as one of the more bizarre and destructive figures in U.S. history. The founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1873, Comstock boasted of hounding women to suicide by pursuing their prosecution for selling contraceptive pills or assisting abortions. As a federal postal inspector, he once raided an art gallery selling nude paintings, including a reproduction of the “Birth of Venus,” which a court ordered seized. He saw newspapers, magazines and novels as satanic influences for promoting “evil reading” and encouraged destruction of books.
He lobbied for an 1873 federal law that makes it a felony to mail any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion,” or even any advice on how or where to get an abortion or contraception. Later judicial interpretation prompted removal of the Comstock Act’s prohibition on mailing contraception, but its purported ban on abortion-related supplies is still on the books. Americans were reminded of this astonishing — and troubling — fact at Tuesday’s Supreme Court oral argument over efforts by antiabortion doctors to rescind Food and Drug Administration rules allowing the distribution of mifepristone, used for medical abortions.
… Democrats should lead [the effort to repeal this law] while they still control the Senate and the White House. And they should do so despite understandable fears that trying, and failing, to repeal the law could paradoxically reinforce its validity. It’s a fight worth having. Let House Republicans refuse to consider a bill, or the Senate GOP filibuster one, and explain to voters why they oppose eliminating even the theoretical chance people could get up to five years in prison (the maximum penalty for a first offense) for shipping mifepristone. (The law also applies to express common carriers, such as FedEx and UPS.)
In fact, a number of groups and individuals on the right are trying to revive the Comstock Act. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a policy blueprint for a second Donald Trump term to which more than 100 conservative groups contributed, says a Trump Justice Department should “announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such [abortion] pills.” Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general who devised that state’s law encouraging civil lawsuits against abortion providers, has said: “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock.”
Someone hasn’t been paying attention, they’re already using it to ban mailing of abortion meds
Yeah we already seen how well Dems protect those kind of right with Roe vs Wade repeal.
By the way, iirc federal decriminalisation of homosexuality (in 2003 no less!) was also made in court. Did some additional protections were made later or it can be struck just as RvW?
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Nobody is going to take on a repeal. Imagine the GOP campaign ads:
“Democrats want to fill your mailbox with porn and filth!”
Isn’t that what they say now?
Oh no! We can’t do anything good ever because of what people we are opposed to will say. How convenient, make sure to vote blue no matter who.
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Dems won’t lift a finger to protect anyone but the landed gentry.
The best way to prevent misuse of the Comstock Act is to hit them where it hurts. Find out what items their funders sell or trade in the most; then find logical ways to link it to sex or abortion.
Pretty soon you’ll gum up all trade and they will cry for mercy.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1873, Comstock boasted of hounding women to suicide by pursuing their prosecution for selling contraceptive pills or assisting abortions.
Americans were reminded of this astonishing — and troubling — fact at Tuesday’s Supreme Court oral argument over efforts by antiabortion doctors to rescind Food and Drug Administration rules allowing the distribution of mifepristone, used for medical abortions.
During the hearing, Erin Hawley, counsel for the antiabortion doctors, claimed the FDA had ignored the “plain text” of the Comstock Act when it permanently removed a requirement women get mifepristone pills in-person last year.
Though the justices seemed likely to back the FDA for other reasons, the emergence of the Comstock Act from legal dormancy could foreshadow more conservative attempts to use it against reproductive freedom — in a post-Roe world where nearly two-thirds of all abortions are now carried out by medication.
Let House Republicans refuse to consider a bill, or the Senate GOP filibuster one, and explain to voters why they oppose eliminating even the theoretical chance people could get up to five years in prison (the maximum penalty for a first offense) for shipping mifepristone.
Nine GOP senators signed letters last year to CVS and Walgreens as the pharmacy chains prepared to sell mifepristone, warning that the Comstock Act has a five-year statute of limitations — so nothing would stop the next president’s Justice Department from charging companies or individuals with distributing abortion pills.
The original article contains 783 words, the summary contains 248 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
