Democrats in the House and Senate introduced legislation Thursday to revise a long-dormant law that they fear could be used by a future Trump administration to severely limit abortion or effectively ban it altogether.
Spearheaded by Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), the legislation would repeal the abortion provisions of the Comstock Act, an 1873 federal law that prohibits sending abortion-related materials through the mail.
“The Comstock Act is a 150-year-old zombie law prohibiting abortion that has long been consigned to the dustbin of history. But extremist Republicans and Trump judges seized on the idea of misusing Comstock to bypass Congress and deprive women across the country of their reproductive freedoms,” Smith said in a statement.
“It is very dangerous to leave this law in place; we cannot allow MAGA judges and politicians to control the lives of American women,” she added.
The 151-year-old law explicitly prohibits the shipment of “any article or thing designed, adapted or intended to produce abortion.”
The law’s interpretation has been narrowed by Congress over the years, and some experts say it has become obsolete.
But now that the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Roe v. Wade, was overturned, anti-abortion activists see an opening.
These activists, working with former Trump administration officials, have laid the groundwork for the next Republican administration to implement the Comstock Act to stop the shipment of any abortion medications and materials, effectively banning all abortions without the need for Congressional action.
During oral arguments at the Supreme Court challenging efforts to expand access to the abortion pill mifepristone, conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito repeatedly invoked the Comstock Act.
Alito questioned why the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had not challenged the law in its decisions on expanding access to mifepristone through the mail.
“This is an important provision; it is not an obscure subsection of a complicated and obscure law. Everyone in this area knew that,” Alito said.
A 2022 Biden administration Justice Department memo interpreted the law as one that prohibits the shipping of items only when the person sending them knows they will be used for illegal purposes.
Furthermore, lower courts have also held that the Comstock Act only applies to illegal abortions and does not prohibit the distribution of medications or other items intended to be used for lawful purposes.
But Democrats and the Biden campaign are calling attention to how the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress could use the Comstock Act as part of their broader focus on reproductive rights ahead of the November elections.
“Trump’s allies have said that the 150-year-old Comstock Act gives Trump the authority to effectively ban medical abortion nationwide, even in states where abortion is currently legal,” said Morgan Mohr, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign. Biden for reproductive rights, in a statement. recent memo to reporters.
“Under Trump’s advisers’ radical legal theory, they can use Comstock to sue anyone who uses the Internet or U.S. mail to facilitate an abortion — and they can even sue women and health care providers,” Mohr wrote. .
A Comstock repeal bill is unlikely to get very far in the current divided Congress, especially since Republicans in the Senate have blocked recent bills to protect access to contraception and in vitro fertilization. But Democrats are committed to elevating abortion as an election year issue.
“Congressional Republicans and their allies in statehouses across the country are out of step with the American people – nothing will stop them from enacting extreme policies that put women’s lives at risk. We know that Americans want the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies,” said Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), who introduced a companion bill in the House.
Balint was joined by Reps. Cori Bush (Mo.), Veronica Escobar (Texas), Mary Gay Scanlon (Pa.) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (N.J.).
The Democrats’ effort is endorsed by leading advocacy groups, including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the ACLU, the Center for Reproductive Rights and Reproductive Freedom for All, among others.
The last time Democrats introduced any legislation related to the Comstock Act was in 1997, when then-Rep. Barney Frank (Mass.) led the Comstock Cleanup Act of 1997, which would have repealed the abortion provision. The project never progressed.
Abortion advocacy groups were hesitant to promote legislation related to the Comstock Act until the Supreme Court decided the mifepristone case.
But judges earlier this month unanimously rejected the challenge on procedural grounds, opening the door for the introduction of the bill.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
