The 19th century sexual purity law that some want to revive | CNN

Reviving the Comstock Act has a practical dimension too. Until the late 1930s, anti-vice activists and postal inspectors used the statute to persecute a broad category of Americans writing and speaking about sex. That included publishers mailing editions of famous works of literature, from Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" to Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." It also included anatomy texts, sex education materials and information about birth control. Even private love letters — or notes arranging dates — were sometimes seen as lewd. If conservatives revive the Comstock Act to stop abortion, there is no reason they couldn't bring the rest of the law to bear too, giving local efforts to criminalize speech about sex a major boost…

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/opinions/comstock-act-abortion-first-amendment-ziegler/index.html