When the U.S. district judge, the federal judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, ruled Friday in Texas that the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the leading abortion drug mifepristone violates the law, he cited the 1873 Comstock Act. The so-called anti-vice law prohibits the mailing or distribution of, “obscene materials” and has been dormant for half a century.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the 50-year-old federal right to abortion in its Dobbs decision last year, the Justice Department issued a memorandum that said the Comstock Act does not prohibit the mailing of such drugs as mifepristone. But in his ruling, the Trump-appointed anti-abortion judge, Kacsmaryk, agrees with plaintiffs in the case that the law does in fact prohibit mailing the drug.
Yeah, 1873. You’re right. So, yeah, this, as a historian, when I read the opinion on Friday afternoon, I was just kind of gobsmacked, although I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, as Jessica and Alexis already pointed out. The Comstock Act of 1873 was the product of a vice reformer, Anthony Comstock, who lobbied Congress in 1873, and the law was passed in March of 1873, so we’re looking at 150 years now just last month. And the law essentially criminalized anything having to do with sex at the federal level, and that included instruments that could be used for the prevention of conception or to procure abortion. And so, for the judge to raise the Comstock law
— source democracynow.org | Apr 10, 2023