After more than a year of intensifying calls to repeal the Comstock Act, Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) introduced a bill that would remove language related to abortion from the 19th-century anti-obscenity law. However, the effort stops short of a full repeal—and President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice may be the reason.
Though the text has changed slightly from the 1873 original, today’s federal Comstock laws still ban the importation and mailing of anything that could be considered “obscene.” Currently, this includes an explicit prohibition on mailing “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” If enforced, this would govern not only the U.S. Postal Service, but anything sent by “common carrier”—in other words, any type of shipping or delivery service.
However, after Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut—the 1965 Supreme Court case that legalized contraception for single people and formed much of the legal basis for Roe—Comstock came to be seen as a “dead” law, at least as applied to abortion and contraception. But Comstock is a key feature in the ultra-conservative Project 2025 plan to restrict access to abortion pills, and Texas SB 8 architect Jonathan Mitchell has made it clear he sees Comstock as an easy path to a total national abortion ban, with no action from Congress required.
In the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Comstock has emerged as one of the most serious threats to reproductive health care.
“This is why I’m introducing legislation to repeal Comstock,” Smith said in a press release on Thursday. “It is too dangerous to leave this law on the books; we cannot allow MAGA judges and politicians to control the lives of American women.” Smith introduced the bill in the Senate along with 18 co-sponsors. Companion legislation was introduced in the House by Reps. Becca Balint, Cori Bush, Veronica Escobar, Mary Gay Scanlon,........