WASHINGTON – Democratic U.S. Senator for Minnesota Tina Smith announced plans Thursday to introduce legislation to eliminate language in the Comstock Act – the infamous law that formed the cornerstone of America’s censorship of all sexual material from the 1870s to the 1970s – to be repealed with regard to the distribution of related material. for abortion and sexual health.
Smith didn’t reveal it during her announcement the actual text of its proposed Stop Comstock Act (SCA), which has also been drafted endorsed by other congressional Democrats like New York Rep. Pat Ryan.
There is some inaccuracy in Thursday’s announcement about whether Smith and her allies intend to repeal all sex censorship provisions of the Comstock Act and related legislation, or, as she later appeared to specify in the statement, only “language in the Comstock laws that could be used by an anti-abortion administration to ban the shipment of mifepristone and other drugs used in abortion medications, instruments and equipment used in abortions, and educational materials related to sexual health.
Smith described the Comstock Act as “an arcane 1873 law that Republicans and anti-choice extremists want to exploit to ban abortion nationwide.”
As XBIZ reported, clear and present concerns about the Comstock Act increased this spring when conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas invoked it in oral arguments, echoing the spirit of the Heritage Foundation’s call led Project 2025 to renew its enforcement.
The Comstock Act, the congressional news site The Hill explained in March, “prohibited the transmission of material deemed ‘obscene, lewd or lascivious,’ including such items as birth control, abortion drugs and pornography.”
Legal experts like University of Michigan professor Leah Litman, the Hill added, “are concerned that Thomas or Alito — or both — could write a Comstock-targeted opinion arguing that the law is viable. Such a view could encourage a future Republican administration and anti-abortion groups to move forward with plans to enforce the Comstock Act in ways that have not been enforced before.”
“The Comstock Act is a 150-year-old zombie law banning abortion that has long been consigned to the dustbin of history,” Senator Smith wrote Thursday. “But extremist Republicans and Trump judges have seized on the idea of using Comstock to bypass Congress and deprive women across the country of their reproductive freedoms. When MAGA Republicans say they plan to use the Comstock Act to control women’s decisions and implement a backdoor national abortion ban, we should believe them. Now that Trump has overturned Roe, a future Republican administration could attempt to misapply this 150-year-old Comstock law to deny American women their rights, even in states where abortion rights are protected by state law.
Smith added that “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.”
Her office added that these censorship laws were originally “intended to prohibit the transmission or transmission of any obscene, lewd, indecent article, thing, thing or device, for the purpose of restricting abortion, contraceptives, and even love letters,” and “a A future administration hostile to sexual and reproductive health care will deliberately misapply these unconstitutionally vague laws to impose nationwide abortion bans, even without any action by Congress.”