The Anti-Comstock Bloc

One of the most sinister anti-choice laws is already in place. These lawmakers want to repeal it before the right revives it.

Hey thanks for reading MomLeft! Heads up that I’ll be out this weekend. Have a safe eclipse day and don’t look directly at the sun! Until next week, here’s a big roundup of everything on my radar:

Technically, one of the U.S.’s most arcane abortion restrictions is already on the books. The 1873 Comstock Act is a sweeping, puritanical federal law that makes it a felony to mail birth control, abortifacients, pornography, or even information about abortion.

While the act has gone unenforced for decades, and its provisions against birth control struck down, the bulk of the law is still standing—and the anti-choice lobby hopes to revive it in the service of abortion bans.

During a hearing this month on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, an anti-choice group’s attorney (incidentally, the wife of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley) argued that telehealth abortion services violated the Comstock Act by allowing people to receive abortion pills in the mail. Republican lawmakers have also signed a legal brief and written letters in favor of unleashing the Comstock Act on healthcare providers.

The new interest in the old law has renewed calls to repeal the Comstock Act in whole or in part. The Washington Post editorial board this week called for the act to be struck down.

“Democrats should lead that effort while they still control the Senate and the White House,” the editorial board writes. “And they should do so despite understandable fears that trying, and failing, to repeal the law could paradoxically reinforce its validity. It’s a fight worth having. Let House Republicans refuse to consider a bill, or the Senate GOP filibuster one, and explain to voters why they oppose eliminating even the theoretical chance people could get up to five years in prison (the maximum penalty for a first offense) for shipping mifepristone.”

That call coincided with new momentum from Democratic lawmakers opposed to the Comstock Act. Last month, Rep. Cori Bush became the first congress member to call for repealing the Comstock Act. She was joined this week by Sen. Tina Smith, who authored a New York Times op-ed explaining her opposition. Rep. Becca Balint followed on Wednesday, tweeting that “The Comstock Act is an arcane and discredited law from the 1870s. Today in 2024, Republicans want to use it to ban abortion nationwide. Even in states where abortion is protected. I'm ready to fight back and repeal it.” (Sen. Elizabeth Warren also suggested last month that lawmakers might repeal the act’s language about abortion.)

A revived Comstock Act could gravely imperil abortion rights in the U.S. As Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas (who has followed Comstock politics closely) notes, nearly two-thirds of abortions in 2023 were carried out with pills. Even without a full abortion ban, the criminalization of pills-by-mail would put reproductive care out of reach for many who need it.

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I would so desperately love to stop writing about reproductive health crises! But there’s more (plus some other stories from around the parentsphere):

-Today and Saturday, North Dakota’s Republican Party will vote on resolutions that set the course for the red state’s legislative agenda. On the table is an anti-abortion resolution that defines life as beginning at fertilization (it makes no apparent concessions for IVF) and calls for criminal penalties against “anyone who kills a pre-born human being.” That appears to include people obtaining abortions, an escalation in a state that currently does not have criminal penalties for people who seek to terminate a pregnancy.

Also up for consideration is a resolution defining marriage as between a man and a woman, a resolution against adding sexual orientation and gender identity to protected class listings, and a resolution in support of “universal school choice” (which, as I’ve written recently, redirects public education funds to private schools).

-But! In better news, activists in Arizona say they’ve collected enough signatures to force a vote on whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. If passed, the constitutional amendment would guarantee a “fundamental right” to abortion through 24 weeks of pregnancy, after which exceptions can be made for the pregnant person’s health. Canvassers needed approximately 384,000 signatures to secure the ballot item. They say they’ve obtained 506,892.

-Doctors in Gaza say they’ve seen evidence of Israeli snipers targeting Palestinian children. In the Guardian, nine doctors described “treating a steady stream of children, elderly people and others who were clearly not combatants with single bullet wounds to the head or chest.

“Some of the physicians said that the types and locations of the wounds, and accounts of Palestinians who brought children to the hospital, led them to believe the victims were directly targeted by Israeli troops.”

-Right-wing antagonism toward public education bears much of the blame for crumbling K-12 institutions. But a new Baffler essay argues that Democratic-led campaigns against the fabled overpaid, underperforming unionized teacher helped enable some of the massive educator attrition taking place in schools today.

-The Washington Post has a really interesting visual analysis of recent state laws about education related to race, sex, and gender. While states like Texas and Florida have each passed multiple laws restricting education, states like California and New Jersey have passed their own legislation protecting educational rights. 

-Speaking of Florida’s educational gag orders: before becoming one of the leading voices against sex education and LGBTQ+ rights in Florida schools and elsewhere, Chris Rufo helped high schoolers make films about topics like teen pregnancy and coming out gay. Media Matters reports that Rufo was a founder and instructor in a youth filmmaking program that helped teenagers express their feelings about sex, pregnancy, coming out, and sexually aggressive hazing. That sounds really meaningful, Chris! Sounds like kids really value a safe venue to process the realities of adolescent and early-adult life!

-Kindergarteners in some schools are being made to each lunch in silence because it… optimizes the time kids spend in class? I don’t think young brains work that way and neither does the parent who wrote this piece. 

“Sacrificing important social time for the arms race of academic achievement is troubling. It’s unclear how common silent lunch is as a normal part of the school day; some schools only use silent lunches as a punitive measure, and others implemented it as a protective policy during the pandemic,” she writes.

-Let’s close out the week on this deep-dive from the Advocate  on the rise and fall of the Zieglers, the Florida political duo with deep ties to Moms for Liberty.