Democrat Takes Aim at ‘Zombie Law’ in Bid to Protect Abortion Rights
150-year-old Comstock Act is at issue
A Democratic senator wants to repeal a 150-year-old to prevent it from being used to further restrict abortion rights.
Sen Tina Smith, of Minnesota, announced her effort to repeal the Comstock Act, an arcane 1873 law that Republicans and anti-choice extremists want to use to ban abortion nationwide.
Comstock has been cited recently by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in oral arguments during the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA and invoked in the right-wing Project 2025 – broadly seen as a roadmap for a future Trump administration – as a way for an extremist, anti-choice administration to use unilateral executive action to effectively ban abortion nationwide.
“The Comstock Act is a 150-year-old zombie law banning abortion that’s long been relegated to the dustbin of history. But extremist Republicans and Trump judges have seized upon the idea of misusing Comstock to bypass Congress and strip women nationwide of their reproductive freedoms,” Smith said. “When MAGA Republicans say they intend to use the Comstock Act to control women’s decisions and enact a backdoor national abortion ban, we should believe them.
“Now that Trump has overturned Roe, a future Republican administration could try 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,” she added. “This is why I’m introducing legislation to repeal Comstock. 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.”
The Comstock laws are a set of 1800s laws meant to ban the mailing or shipping of every obscene, lewd, indecent, article, matter, thing or device, with the goal of restricting abortion, contraceptives, and even love letters.
A future administration hostile to sexual and reproductive health care will willfully misapply these unconstitutionally vague laws to impose a ban on abortion nationwide, even without any Congressional action, abortion rights advocates say
The Stop Comstock Act would repeal language in the Comstock Laws that could be used by an anti-abortion administration to ban the mailing of mifepristone and other drugs used in medication abortions, instruments and equipment used in abortions, and educational material related to sexual health, according to a statement from Smith’s office.
Medication abortion — such as through the use of Mifepristone — is how nearly 60 percent of abortions take place in this country today. It is the most common form of abortion in the United States.
Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt) will be introducing the House companion bill, according to Smith’s office.
You can access a summary of the bill here.
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