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