Stop the GOP from using the Comstock Act to ban the abortion pill!
In 1873 — nearly 50 years before women could vote — Congress passed the Comstock Act, an obscenity policing law which prohibited the US Postal Service from mailing, among other things, drugs or instruments related to reproductive healthcare. Widely considered an unconstitutional “zombie law,” it has sat dormant, unenforced for generations.
But a growing number of overzealous Republicans want to revive the antiquated “anti-obscenity” law to ban the lawful mailing of mifepristone, an oral medication approved by the FDA for decades that is commonly used to safely administer abortions in the United States.
Stop the GOP from using the Comstock Act to ban the abortion pill!
Mifepristone’s safety record is well documented, of course, and with the Supreme Court’s disastrous Dobbs ruling in 2022, the medication is now the only realistic way for many women — particularly in rural red states where there are no reproductive healthcare clinics — to get the care they need. Reviving a Victorian-era law written entirely by men in the 1870s to criminalize the mailing of mifepristone would amount to a de facto national ban on abortion. Oh, the Comstock Act of 1873 also prohibits the mailing of contraceptives. And if you think far-right morality cops won’t go after birth control next, you are sorely mistaken.
For the umpteenth time, healthcare decisions belong to patients the doctors of their choosing — not lawmakers from the 19th century. If Republicans want to drastically change reproductive healthcare policy, they are welcome to try to do so through the legislative process and answer to voters accordingly.
Tell Republicans to abandon any plans to revive the Comstock Act to ban the abortion pill!
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