'Comstocked': How Extremists Are Exploiting a Victorian-Era Law To Deny Abortion Access
(FUCK THESE GODDAMNED, WOMAN-HATING, CHRISTOFASCIST, THEOCRATIC TERRORISTS)
‘Comstocked’: How Extremists Are Exploiting a Victorian-Era Law To Deny Abortion Access
10/25/2023 by Shoshanna Ehrlich
The 1873 Comstock law prohibits the conveyance of anything used for “the procuring or producing of abortion.” One man believes it’s the gateway to a national abortion ban that even the bluest of states will not be able to evade.
(L-R) Rev. Pat Mahoney, Peggy Nienaber of Faith and Liberty and Mark Lee Dickson of Right to Life East Texas pray in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on April 21, 2023 in Washington, DC. Organized by The Stanton Public Policy Center/Purple Sash Revolution, the small group of demonstrators called on the Supreme Court to affirm Federal District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling that suspends the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
In June 2019, the all-male city council in Waskom, Texas, unanimously voted to make the tiny town of just 2,000 residents the nation’s first “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Characterizing fetuses as the “most innocent among us [who] deserve equal protection under the law,” the ordinance expressly bans abortion within its municipal boundaries. The man behind the ban, anti-abortion zealot and pastor Mark Lee Dickson, has since expanded his campaign to outlaw abortion “one city at a time” into at least six other states. At first glance, this effort may appear superfluous in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which, in overturning Roe v. Wade, ended federal protection of abortion rights. In response to the decision, a growing number of states have enacted outright abortion bans or highly restrictive laws, while others have doubled down on a commitment to keeping abortion legal and accessible.
However, Dickson has crafted a dangerous legal strategy for transforming even abortion-friendly states by resuscitating the Comstock anti-obscenity law from 1873, which prohibits the conveyance of anything used for “the procuring or producing of abortion.” Dickson believes this is the gateway to a national abortion ban that even the bluest of states will not be able to evade.
Making the U.S. a “sanctuary for the unborn” Although long an adherent to anti-abortion beliefs, Dickson did not join the ranks of activists until 2012, when he began preaching outside the Hope Medical Group for Women, a clinic in Shreveport, La. Seven years later, a rumor that Hope Medical was planning to relocate across the border to Waskom in response to a Louisiana law that tightened restrictions on abortion providers prompted Dickson to launch the sanctuary-city movement.
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Of more immediate concern is a case out of Texas. In fall 2022, a Christian legal group, citing the Comstock law, sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over its approval of mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortions. The Biden administration has asserted that Comstock does not apply to the mailing of abortion pills in cases where the sender intends for them to be used lawfully. The judge in the Texas case, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, disagreed. In April, he wrote in a preliminary ruling, “The Comstock Act declares ‘non-mailable’ every ‘article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use it or apply it for producing abortion.’ … Therefore, federal criminal law declares they [abortion pills] are ‘nonmailable.’”
In August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on the case that would sharply restrict access to medication abortion nationwide—but its decision remains on hold pending a final review by the Supreme Court. While Mitchell isn’t officially affiliated with the Texas mifepristone case, it certainly aligns with his effort to, as he told The Nation, “get Comstock to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible.” Underscoring how this arcane law has been weaponized by anti-abortion extremists, Gallegos, the state senator for Eunice, denounced the New Mexico governor and apprised her that “Eunice and New Mexico have had enough of this death culture! … Madame governor, consider yourself Comstocked.”
https://msmagazine.com/2023/10/25/comstock-abortion-access-sanctuary-cities/