Dear Commons Community,

Michelle Goldberg has a column this morning warning America about a little known law that if enforced could be used to ban the mailing of “devices and substances” for producing abortion. Goldberg gives excellent background on the Comstock Law for those of us not familiar with it.  She quotes Jonathan F. Mitchell, a crusading anti-abortion lawyer who represented Trump before the Supreme Court this year, who said:

 “We don’t need a federal ban [on abortion] when we have Comstock on the books.”

Goldberg goes on to describe the 1873 act as:

“It is similarly difficult to get Americans to appreciate the threat that the 19th-century Comstock Act could be resurrected. Named colloquially for the fanatical postal inspector Anthony Comstock, the 1873 act — which is actually a set of anti-vice laws — bans the mailing of “obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile” material, including devices and substances used “for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral purpose.” Though never repealed, it was, until recently, considered a dead letter, made moot by Supreme Court decisions on free speech, birth control and abortion.

But with Roe overturned, some in Donald Trump’s orbit see a chance to reanimate Comstock, using it to ban medication abortion — and maybe surgical abortion as well — without passing new federal legislation.

The 920-page blueprint for a second Trump administration created by Project 2025, a coalition of conservative organizations, calls for enforcing Comstock’s criminal prohibitions against using the mail — widely understood to include common carriers like UPS and FedEx — to provide or distribute abortion pills.

She concludes with a warning that we would likely see Republicans attempting to enforce Comstock if Trump is elected in November.

The entire column is worth a read.

Tony

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