Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren Vogelbaum.
Speaker 1: Here It's impossible to say exactly what Anthony Comstock would
Speaker 1: have thought about life in the US today, but this
Speaker 1: nineteenth century morality crusader has become surprisingly influential in twenty
Speaker 1: first century America. Born in eighteen forty four, Comstock was
Speaker 1: a Civil War veteran, a religious sellate, and enthusiastic censor
Speaker 1: of reading material. In eighteen seventy three, Comstock founded the
Speaker 1: New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, a society
Speaker 1: whose crest bore two images, a man in a top
Speaker 1: hatch shoving another man into a jail cell and a
Speaker 1: gentleman tossing a pile of books onto a pyre. That year,
Speaker 1: Comstock also successfully lobbied Congress to pass what's known as
Speaker 1: the Comstock Act, a law prohibiting the possession, sale, distribution,
Speaker 1: or mailing of materials that are quote obscene, lewd, lascivious,
Speaker 1: and decent, filthy, or vile, which could include obvious things
Speaker 1: like pornographic books or sex toys, but also a wider
Speaker 1: scope of things like personal letters with sexual content or
Speaker 1: contraceptive or abortive substances. Violation of the Comstock Act was
Speaker 1: punishable with fines and prison sentences. After Comstock's anti Obscenity
Speaker 1: Bill was signed, he was assigned as a special Agent
Speaker 1: and inspector to the US Postal Office, giving him power
Speaker 1: to enforce the law. Under court order, Comstock seized and
Speaker 1: burned millions of books, newspapers, pamphlets, photographs, and other printed materials,
Speaker 1: many of them educational documents about then taboo topics like
Speaker 1: sexual health, atheism, homosexuality, contraception, abortion, and women's rights. Under
Speaker 1: the Comstock Act, the first violation imposed a five year
Speaker 1: maximum prison sentence, while subsequent violations could rack up ten years.
Speaker 1: Over three thousand people were arrested under the law, serving
Speaker 1: what added up to six hundred years in prison. Comstock
Speaker 1: acted as personal and political nemesis to early feminists like
Speaker 1: Emma Goldman and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. He was
Speaker 1: even known to boast about the number of libertines he
Speaker 1: drove to suicide. Although the Comstock Act lost a lot
Speaker 1: of its potency after its author's death in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: it was actively enforced until the nineteen thirties. A court
Speaker 1: case that helped bring it down, centered on the literary
Speaker 1: value of James Joyce's novel Ulysses as a whole, instead
Speaker 1: of declaring it obscene because of a few passages. Another
Speaker 1: case during that decade made it legal for doctors to
Speaker 1: send birth control information and devices through the mail. Congress
Speaker 1: and the Supreme Court removed all restrictions in the Act
Speaker 1: regarding contraception in nineteen seventy one and nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: the years just before the legislation's hundredth birthday, but the
Speaker 1: Act was never completely repealed, and no, notably, it still
Speaker 1: includes language about abortion related materials, and that's why the
Speaker 1: Comstock Act of eighteen seventy three is having a bit
Speaker 1: of a renaissance now one hundred and fifty years after
Speaker 1: its passage. After the US Supreme Court overruled Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade in June of twenty twenty two, anti abortion activists
Speaker 1: cast around for some piece of legislation that could criminalize
Speaker 1: the distribution of the abortion drug mif ofpristone, the drug
Speaker 1: currently used in more than half of abortions in the
Speaker 1: United States. A block's a hormone that fertilized eggs need
Speaker 1: in order to stick to the uterine lining. What these
Speaker 1: activists found was this dormant Victorian era curiosity of a
Speaker 1: law that was used generations ago to ban everything from
Speaker 1: educational pamphlets to fine art. Nobody that we know of
Speaker 1: has yet attempted to use the Comstock Act as a
Speaker 1: mechanism for banning the interstate shipment of sexually explicit magazines
Speaker 1: and books, or for block any of the pornography websites
Speaker 1: on today's Internet, but it has been revived by anti
Speaker 1: abortion groups and states looking to prevent the interstate shipment
Speaker 1: off pristone. Although the reversal of Roe v. Wade ended
Speaker 1: the right to abortions for all Americans, the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: left the decision of whether to permit abortions to each state.
Speaker 1: A Texas, for instance, banned most abortions immediately after the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruling, but in other states, both in clinic
Speaker 1: and abortion by pill remain completely legal, and anyone can
Speaker 1: order MiFi pristone through the mail. The Comstock Act still
Speaker 1: contains language prohibiting the mailing of quote any article or
Speaker 1: thing designed or intended for the procuring of an abortion.
Speaker 1: The Justice Department clarified in early January of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three that the Comstock Act does not prohibit the mailing
Speaker 1: of abortion pills quote where the sender lacks the intent
Speaker 1: that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully. Nonetheless.
Speaker 1: In February of twenty twenty three, twenty Republican lawmakers used
Speaker 1: the Act in letters written to CVS and Walgreen's pharmacies,
Speaker 1: threatening them with legal action if they began distributing the drug,
Speaker 1: and the Act is now at the heart of multiple
Speaker 1: court cases attempting to ban abortions. One that just went
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court this month December of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three is based on an anti abortion activist turned district
Speaker 1: court judge in Texas who ordered a hold on federal
Speaker 1: approval of mif pristone back in April. His judgment came
Speaker 1: in a case citing a hypothetical situation in which a
Speaker 1: doctor might have to treat a patient experiencing complications from
Speaker 1: taking methi pristone, and in doing so, the doctor might
Speaker 1: experience trauma from completing the patient's abortion. A note that
Speaker 1: mif pristone is incredibly safe. It's less likely to cause
Speaker 1: problems than thailanol, but this judge cited the Comstock Act
Speaker 1: in his opinion, a putting forth that it renders all
Speaker 1: mailed abortion materials and thus all abortions illegal. In another case,
Speaker 1: beginning in late twenty twenty two, four county governments in
Speaker 1: New Mexico passed local ordinances upholding the Comstock Act's ban
Speaker 1: on mailed abortion materials. The state governor, legislature, and Attorney
Speaker 1: general have been working to get the New Mexico Supreme
Speaker 1: Court to strike the ordinances down based on a new
Speaker 1: state law preventing interference with any person's access to or
Speaker 1: use of reproductive healthcare. It seems likely that the court
Speaker 1: will indeed strike down these ordinances, but for now there
Speaker 1: is no telling whether the Comstock Act is strong enough
Speaker 1: to stand up to twenty first century American politics, and
Speaker 1: only time will tell what ultimate influence it will have.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article how is a
Speaker 1: nineteenth century of synity law being used to ban the
Speaker 1: abortion pill? On HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Justin Shields.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership
Speaker 1: with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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