‘Comstocked’: How Extremists Are Exploiting a Victorian-Era Law To Deny Abortion Access

The 1873 Comstock law prohibits the conveyance of anything used for “the procuring or producing of abortion.” One man believes it’s the gateway to a national abortion ban that even the bluest of states will not be able to evade.

10/25/2023
by SHOSHANNA EHRLICH

In June 2019, the all-male city council in Waskom, Texas, unanimously voted to make the tiny town of just 2,000 residents the nation’s first “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Characterizing fetuses as the “most innocent among us [who] deserve equal protection under the law,” the ordinance expressly bans abortion within its municipal boundaries. The man behind the ban, anti-abortion zealot and pastor Mark Lee Dickson, has since expanded his campaign to outlaw abortion “one city at a time” into at least six other states.

At first glance, this effort may appear superfluous in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which, in overturning Roe v. Wade, ended federal protection of abortion rights. In response to the decision, a growing number of states have enacted outright abortion bans or highly restrictive laws, while others have doubled down on a commitment to keeping abortion legal and accessible.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/10/25/comstock-abortion-access-sanctuary-cities/


The Wall Some Texans Want to Build Against Abortion

The Wall Some Texans Want to Build Against Abortion
Around the country, a “sanctuary city” movement is growing on the right and the left, as people seek to keep out views they don’t agree with, legal or not.

By Dionne Searcey
March 3, 2020

LINDALE, Texas — A small group of women at a recent City Council meeting held hands and offered hushed prayers in an otherwise silent room.

Everyone was waiting for the council members to decide whether their community would become the next “sanctuary city for the unborn.”

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/us/politics/texas-abortion-sanctuary-cities.html