Todd Blanche Just Opened the Door to a National Abortion Ban – Mother Jones

The 19th-century law made it a federal crime to mail, possess, give away, or sell “obscene materials”—including items used for abortion. Parts of the law relating to birth control were repealed in 1971, but Comstock was never repealed in its entirety. When abortion providers started prescribing pills to patients in states where abortion was banned thanks to “shield” laws, anti-abortion activists argued that this was a violation of the Comstock Act. Project 2025 also called for criminal prosecutions of abortion pill providers under Comstock, though the document only references the law by statute number, not by name. 

In response, a December 2022 opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said it was not illegal for the U.S. Postal Service and other carriers like FedEx and UPS to deliver abortion medications to states that ban abortion, and that Comstock did not apply unless the sender intended pills to be used unlawfully. That interpretation has reassured abortion providers that they can prescribe pills across state lines without fear of federal prosecution...

 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/todd-blanche-just-opened-the-door-to-a-national-abortion-ban/

 

American Infidels (Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freethought Radio podcast)

Historian Steven K. Green‘s new book, American Infidelity: The Gilded Age Battle Over Freethought, Free Love and Feminism, describes how 19th-century freethinkers fought religious laws such as the Comstock Act.

Interview: 

https://ffrf.org/news/freethought-radio/freethought-today-june-11-2026

The “Messy” Plaintiffs Behind So Many Anti-Abortion Lawsuits – Mother Jones

According to an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle, at the same time that Mitchell was promoting his client as a symbol of aggrieved fathers-to-be, the Galveston man was evading a felony arrest warrant for allegedly beating up the girlfriend whose abortions he claimed to mourn. In October 2024—a few months before filing his lawsuit—Rodriguez had a violent altercation with his girlfriend at a motel. He allegedly grabbed the woman’s neck as if he was trying to “crush” it, the article detailed, to the point where she “believed she was going to die.” She told police the attack was the eighth time in five months that Rodriguez assaulted her. He then proceeded to slam her to the floor, climb on top of her, and punch and slap her until she finally broke free and escaped, the Chronicle said…

 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/04/the-messy-plaintiffs-behind-so-many-anti-abortion-lawsuits/

 

Charismatic Violence (Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freethought Radio podcast)

Annie Laurie reports on religiously motivated abortion referenda in seven states around the country, as well as the repressive 19th-century Comstock Act that is still invoked today to limit women’s rights as it did with Margaret Sanger. 

We hear Dan Barker’s tribute song to Margaret Sanger called “No Gods, No Masters.” 

Then we speak with scholar Matthew D. Taylor about his new book about the January 6 insurrection, The Violent Take it By Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy.

Interview: 

https://ffrf.org/news/freethought-radio/freethought-today-september-26-2024/

Vance urged DOJ to enforce Comstock Act, crack down on abortion pills - The Washington Post

"The threat that a future Trump-Vance administration will misuse Comstock to ban abortion nationwide is now a five-alarm fire," said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who is leading an effort to repeal the Comstock Act's abortion provisions in Congress. 

The White House has also drawn a contrast between Biden's stance on Comstock and his GOP rivals. 

"While Republican elected officials would like to resuscitate a law from 1873 to shut down access to mifepristone — which the FDA first approved as safe and effective more than 20 years ago — the Biden-Harris Administration has made clear that the Comstock Act is not a barrier to the shipment or transport of medication abortion," Jennifer Klein, director of the White House's Gender Policy Council, said in a statement...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/07/17/jd-vance-abortion-comstock-vice-presidential-nominee/

The Comstock Act (Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freethought Radio podcast)

A judge ruled that our lawsuit challenging an Oklahoma religious charter school can continue. FFRF Director of Communications Amitabh Pal tells us about the national election results in India, which have weakened the threat of Hindu nationalism. 

Then we speak with novelist Amy Sohn about her book on Anthony Comstock, The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age.

Interview: 

https://ffrf.org/news/freethought-radio/freethought-today-june-6/

Opinion | The Comstock Act Is a Danger to Abortion Rights. I Want to Repeal It. - The New York Times

The whole thing was very silly and impracticable, and that's why the Comstock Act was relegated to the dustbin of history. 

But conservative activists recently revived it from obscurity as part of their playbook for a potential second Trump term: The 887-page plan nicknamed Project 2025 being promoted by groups like the Heritage Foundation explicitly calls for a newly elected second-term President Trump to use this zombie law to severely ratchet back abortion access in America without congressional action...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/opinion/comstock-act-abortion-repeal.html

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

Appeals court seems likely to limit access to abortion pill mifepristone - The Washington Post

The justices returned to "the people the power to protect women's health, unborn life, and the integrity of the medical profession by regulating abortion," Hawley, the group's lawyer, told the court. "Yet, the considered judgments of states that have chosen to do so are rendered meaningless by FDA's mail-order abortion scheme." 

Officials from nearly two dozen states led by Democrats warned the 5th Circuit in court filings that applying the Comstock Act to mifepristone would have "potentially boundless effects on medical care delivery" by preventing the distribution of devices, surgical instruments and equipment used in obstetrics and gynecology, in addition to drugs routinely used in other medical treatments...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/17/abortion-pill-appeal-court-arguments/

The 150-year-old law Republicans are using to ban abortion

Mitchell is engineering a sort of civil war via the court system that flips historic left-versus-right roles on "states' rights" in the service of implementing a nationwide abortion ban. Legislating a ban to the same effect would be wildly unpopular, if not impossible. But Republicans are already mobilizing to block state-level ballot initiatives protecting abortion rights; reactivating Comstock is both an insurance policy against those efforts' failures and another costly, time-consuming obstacle for abortion supporters to surmount if state protections for abortion prevail..

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/abortion-pill-mifepristone-ban-republicans-rcna80443

‘Sanctuary cities for the unborn’: how a US pastor is pushing for a national abortion ban

In a legal opinion issued last December, the justice department wrote that the Comstock Act does not apply to prescribed abortion medications, which are often sent in the mail and can be used for a variety of purposes, including managing miscarriages and stopping a hemorrhage. Dickson disagrees. 

"Everyone's ignoring these federal statutes," he said. "In New Mexico, these cities and counties are requiring compliance to federal statutes, and we know that these federal statutes trump state laws and state constitutions."…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/09/pastor-push-national-abortion-ban-sanctuary-cities-for-the-unborn