The Comstock Act, a 150-year-old law named after “anti-vice” crusader Anthony Comstock, passed in 1873. It allowed enforcement power to investigate the U.S. mail for items of an “illicit,” “lewd,” or “immoral” purpose, including items related to abortion. Greer Donley, Associate Professor and Reproductive Justice Scholar at University of Pittsburgh Law School, sits down to talk with us about the Comstock Act—what is it, what it means, and how anti-abortion activists are working to revive it. 

Today, the courts are packed with extreme conservative judges and Trump-appointees who maintain a vested interest in maintaining the act as a strategy to ban abortion pills and procedural items sent through the mail. To combat the Comstock Act and its ability to further decimate reproductive health and rights, Comstock must be completely repealed, and a presidential administration that doesn’t enforce Comstock is necessary. The president, who also has the power of pardoning, can pre-pardon anyone later convicted within the 5-year statutory period of a Comstock-related crime before leaving office. 

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