Rep. Cori Bush Becomes 1st Lawmaker to Call to Repeal the Comstock Act
After Supreme Court arguments on Tuesday, the Missouri representative said that Congress needs to repeal the dormant abortion ban.
Photo: Shutterstock AbortionPolitics
During today’s Supreme Court hearing in a case that could restrict access to the abortion pill nationwide, the justices sounded skeptical of the group that brought the lawsuit, suggesting that they might eventually dismiss the case. But that doesn’t mean the threat to mifepristone is gone: Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas gave credence to the conservative legal theory that a Republican president could enforce a dormant law known as the Comstock Act to ban abortion pills, and possibly all procedural abortions, too.
The Comstock Act of 1873 made it a federal crime to mail, possess, or sell “obscene materials,” and it specifically calls out drugs or devices used for abortions. The law has no exceptions, not even if a pregnant person’s life is in danger, and abortion seekers themselves can be charged under it. It wasn’t enforced while Roe v. Wade stood, but activists are trying to bring it back now that Roe is gone.
In the lead-up to the arguments, nearly 150 Republican members of Congress asked the Supreme Court to use the 19th-century zombie law as a justification to roll back telemedicine access to mifepristone, the first drug taken in a medication abortion.
And now, at least one Democratic lawmaker is finally calling to repeal it. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) posted on Twitter after the hearing that Congress needs to repeal Comstock. We’ve reached out to her office for further comment, including whether she plans to introduce a bill to repeal the law, and we’ll update this post when we hear back. As someone who’s been obsessively tracking comments about Comstock, I believe Bush is the first sitting lawmaker in the post-Dobbs era to say it needs to be repealed.