Democrats To Rescind 1873 Comstock Act Saying It Could Pave Path For National Abortion Ban (image@SenTinaSmith)
The Democrats has introduced legislation to rescind a 19th century Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law that bans mailing abortion-related materials. The move came amidst the growing worries in the country that anti-abortion activists will use the law to implement a federal abortion ban in US.
The bill was introduced by the Minnesota Democratic senator Tina Smith. Smith was backed by Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren and Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto, said Washington Post.
Smith said the “anti-choice extremists” are intending to misapply the Comstock Act, and her job is to stop it at all cost.
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The Comstock Act was passed in 1873, and was named after the anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. In its original iteration, the law broadly banned people from using mail to send anything obscene, lewd or lascivious”, including “any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring an abortion”.
In the last 151 years since the enactment of the law, legal rulings and congressional action narrowed down the scope of the Comstock Act. For several years, the experts regarded it as a dead letter, especially when Roe v Wade established the constitutional right to an abortion.
When the US supreme court overturned the Roe in 2022, anti-abortion activists started to argue that the Comstock Act’s prohibition against mailing of abortion-related materials remained good law. A playbook written by the influential thinktank the Heritage Foundation, recommended that a future conservative presidential administration use the Comstock Act to block the mailing of abortion pills. Other activists argued that the Act can outlaw the mailing of all-abortion related materials.
Since the abortion clinics depends on the mail for the drugs and the tools they need to do their work, such interpretation of the Comstock Act would be a de facto ban on all abortion.
Read also: France Becomes First Country To Add Right To Abortion In Constitution
Biden administration argued that the Comstock Act is violated only if the sender intends for abortion-related materials “to be used unlawfully”. Notably, while the US President has focused his re-election campaign on reproductive rights, he has kept silent on the return of Comstock Act.
While the Minnesota senator does not expect repeal bill to garner the 60 votes that are necessary for advancing the legislation in the Senate, she hopes that the bill will pose as a chance to raise a nationwide awareness on the consequences of the Comstock Act revival, especially among the voters who are living in the states where the abortion laws are currently protected.
