June 24, 2024

Duckworth Joins Smith in Introducing Bill to Repeal the Comstock Act

 

[WASHINGTON, D.C] – Today, U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) joined U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN), U.S. Representative Becca Balint (D-VT-At Large) and more than a dozen Senate Democrats to introduce the Stop Comstock Act, bicameral legislation that would repeal an arcane 1873 law, called the Comstock Act, that Republicans and anti-choice extremists want to misuse to ban abortion nationwide.

“As GOP legislatures, courts and the extremists at Project 2025 have made all too clear, this threat is already a real-life nightmare for countless women living in red states who are denied access to critical reproductive health care every day,” Duckworth said. “In order to protect these women from the MAGA judges and politicians trying to control their bodies and lives, we must repeal the Comstock Act once and for all.”

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. Comstock has been cited recently by Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in oral arguments during the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA and invoked in Project 2025 – broadly seen as a roadmap for a second Trump administration, if elected – as a way for an extremist, anti-choice administration to use unilateral executive action to effectively ban abortion nationwide. 

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. Medication abortion 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.

In addition to Duckworth and Smith, the bill is cosponsored in the Senate by U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), John Fetterman (D-PA), Cory Booker, (D-NJ), Peter Welch (D-VT), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Brian Schatz (D-HI).

In addition to Representative Becca Balint (D-VT-At Large), this bill is cosponsored in the House by U.S. Representatives Cori Bush (D-MO-01), Veronica Escobar (D-TX-16), Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA-5) and Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ-12).

The Stop Comstock Act is endorsed by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America; the American Civil Liberties Union; Physicians for Reproductive Health; the Center for Reproductive Rights; National Women’s Law Center; Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America); Take Back the Court Action Fund; Healthcare Across Borders; All* Above All; Power to Decide; Expanding Medication Abortion Access (EMAA); Power to Decide; and The Guttmacher Institute and Indivisible.

Summary of the bill is available here.

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