An 1873 law banned the mailing of boxing photos. Could it block abortion pills, too?

BY: JENNIFER SHUTT
APRIL 5, 2024

WASHINGTON — An anti-obscenity law enacted in 1873 that hasn’t been enforced in decades shot to the forefront of the nation’s abortion debate in the past week thanks to two U.S. Supreme Court justices, amid expectations a future Republican president would use the law to order a nationwide ban on medication abortion.

The Comstock Act, which prohibited the mailing of anatomy textbooks and boxing photographs as well as contraceptives, drew fresh attention after Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas during March 26 oral arguments seemed to suggest the law would block the mailing of mifepristone.

Continued: https://missouriindependent.com/2024/04/05/an-1873-law-banned-the-mailing-of-boxing-photos-could-it-block-abortion-pills-too/

The Biggest Thing Missing From Joe Biden’s State of the Union

BY DAVID S. COHEN, GREER DONLEY, AND RACHEL REBOUCHE
MARCH 08, 2024

On Thursday night, President Joe Biden gave an energetic and compelling State of the Union address that centered reproductive freedom. It was the second topic he addressed, behind only threats to democracy, abroad with Putin and at home with Trump. In turning to reproductive rights, Biden was able to showcase the powerful stories of his invited guests, like Kate Cox and Latorya Beasley, to underscore the real harms of anti-abortion policies.

There was a lot to appreciate in his speech, but there were missed opportunities. Reproductive rights and justice advocates immediately noticed that Biden did not say the word “abortion”—a recurring issue for the president. But we noticed the omission of another word, which we think is possibly even more significant given the coming election: Comstock.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/abortion-comstock-act-joe-biden-state-of-the-union.html

USA opinion: It’s too dangerous to allow this antiquated law to exist any longer

by David S. Cohen, Greer Donley and Rachel ReboucheComst
Mon January 22, 2024

The most significant national threat to reproductive rights is not a looming Supreme Court judgment or a bill being considered by Congress. It’s already here, in the form of an extant but long dormant law from 1873 that could ban abortion nationwide: the Comstock Act. The act is named after Anthony Comstock, an anti-vice crusader from the late 1800s who used his power as a special agent of the US Postal Service to enforce his beliefs about sex and propriety. He was able to persuade Congress to pass laws against “indecent or immoral” materials, including broad definitions of contraception, pornography and abortion.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/22/opinions/abortion-threat-comstock-act-must-be-repealed-cohen-donley-rebouche/index.html

22.01.2024

The Abortion Provider Who Became the Most Hated Woman in New York

In nineteenth-century New York, abortion was shrouded in secrecy and stigma. But, for Madame Restell, there was no such thing as bad press.

By Moira Donegan
January 17, 2024

She chose the name because it sounded French. When she took out her first newspaper ad, in 1839, she wanted to cultivate an air of mystery and sophistication. In time, her pseudonym, Madame Restell, would be furnished with a backstory for the women who arrived at her office door. The Madame, they were told, had been trained in Europe, at the continent’s famous lying-in maternity hospitals. She’d been taught by her grandmother, a French midwife, and her “preventative powders” had been used in Europe for decades.

None of it was true. The woman her clients knew as Madame Restell had been born Ann Trow, in rural England, grown up in poverty, and never received any formal medical training. But these origins were supposed to be comfortingly credentialled to Restell’s customers, the women who made her into one of the wealthiest—and most notorious—businesswomen in New York City. They came to her seeking abortions.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/the-abortion-provider-who-became-the-most-hated-woman-in-new-york

‘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/

Opinion: Madame Restell, and the history of abortion in America

By JONATHAN P. BAIRD
July 10, 2023

Last year, as we watched the U.S. Supreme Court destroy reproductive freedom for women, more attention was paid to the outcome of the Dobbs abortion case than the Court’s reasoning and justification. Justice Samuel Alito, Dobbs author, relied heavily on history in supporting his opinion.

What happened in earlier American history is contested terrain. I would submit that Justice Alito got his history very wrong. He argued that abortion was not deeply rooted in U.S. history and traditions. Alito wrote, “…an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”

Continued: https://www.concordmonitor.com/My-Turn-Abortion-history-Madame-Restell-and-the-revival-of-Comstockery-51539521

10.07.2023

American Historical Association

American Medical Association

New York State Society for the Suppression of Vice

quickening

Samuel Alito

USA – The 150-Year-Old Comstock Act Could Transform the Abortion Debate

Once considered a relic of moral panics past, the 1873 law criminalized sending “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials through the mail

June 15, 2023
Ellen Wexler, Assistant Editor, Humanities, The Smithsonian

“Our youth are in danger.” So read the urgent warning written by anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock in his 1883 book, Traps for the Young.

He cautioned, “Mentally and morally, they are cursed by a literature that is a disgrace to the 19th century. The spirit of evil environs them.”

Continued: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/comstock-act-transform-abortion-debate-180982363/

USA – Don’t rule out a national abortion ban in 2025

Activists think they have a path to stopping abortions nationwide. It runs not through Congress but through the White House, the Supreme Court, and an arcane 19th-century law.

By Mary Ziegler
May 30, 2023

Almost a year ago, when the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court promised that each state would make its own decision on abortion. At the time, a national statute of any kind seemed impossible. Democrats had tried and failed to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have secured abortion rights nationwide. And once Republicans gained a majority in the House of Representatives, they didn’t try to pass a national abortion ban. Their legislative wish list did not include one, and poll after poll showed that most Americans believed abortion to be a right and wanted it to be legal, especially early in pregnancy.

The antiabortion movement had never wanted the issue left to the states. Since the 1980s, the movement had made sure that the Republican Party platform had a plank endorsing a human life amendment. But in the immediate aftermath of the Dobbs ruling, it seemed that there was little chance that antiabortion advocates could get their wish for a national ban.

Continued: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/30/opinion/abortion-ban-comstock-act-mary-ziegler/

USA – How a 150-Year-Old Law Against Lewdness Became a Key to the Abortion Fight

The Comstock Act, named for a public-morals crusader on a mission to “sanitize” the U.S. in the 1870s, makes a comeback in the abortion-pill battle.

By Emily Bazelon
May 16, 2023

Anthony Comstock, a 19th-century crusader against sexual liberty, was mocked as a prude in his own time, but wielded real power. He persuaded Congress in 1873 to pass the Comstock Act, written by and named for him, making it a federal crime to send or deliver “obscene, lewd or lascivious” material through the mail or by other carriers, specifically including items used for abortion or birth control.

By the 1960s, the Comstock Act had fallen out of use — narrowed by court rulings, partly gutted by congressional repeals — and it was made an unconstitutional relic by the Supreme Court’s decision in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, recognizing a national right to abortion. But it stayed on the books.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/abortion-comstock-act.html

USA – Anti-abortion legal strategy revives Comstock moral purity laws of late 1800s

BY: ELISHA BROWN
APRIL 27, 2023

When officials in a small New Mexico city sued the governor and attorney general over their ordinance placing restrictions on abortion clinics earlier this month, they argued that a late 19th century federal anti-obscenity law superseded state law. In March, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law a measure prohibiting public entities from interfering with reproductive and gender-affirming care access.

It was the latest legal challenge to abortion access to lean on the Comstock Act of 1873, federal statutes that ban the mailing of anything “obscene, lewd, lascivious” or considered morally impure, including abortifacients or abortion-related materials.

Continued: https://lailluminator.com/2023/04/27/anti-abortion-legal-strategy-revives-comstock-moral-purity-laws-of-late-1800s/

27.04.2023