As we’ve noted previously, abortion rights amendments were on the ballot in 10 states on Election Day. They passed in seven of those states. (In Florida, the measure received majority support at 57%, but a 60% threshold is required to pass ballot initiatives there.)
These results, coupled with earlier votes in other states supporting reproductive rights, are strong evidence that Americans want abortion and access to birth control to remain legal.
Don’t expect that to matter to the incoming Trump administration.
Trump insisted during the campaign that he’ll let states decide abortion policy. But Trump will be under intense pressure from his Christian Nationalist allies to interfere with reproductive rights, and, let’s face it, the man often lies about his policy views. We should prepare for the worst.
One way a Trump administration could meddle in reproductive rights would be to resurrect the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that prohibits using the U.S. Mail to send “obscene” material. In Project 2025, Christian Nationalists call for using the law to block sending abortion drugs by mail, which is currently legal in many states.
Where did this law come from? Its origins go back to Anthony Comstock, an anti-vice crusader who used the law to crack down on books and magazines he considered obscene. (They weren’t. In fact, many of the books Comstock targeted are today considered to be classics.) But Comstock interpreted the law broadly and also used it to attack Americans’ access to birth control.
As Margaret Hamm noted in a review of a book about Comstock in Church & State, “Comstock’s motivation for these laws, which banned sending contraceptives and other ‘obscene’ materials through the mail, stemmed from his desire to root out societal behavior that went against his Christian beliefs, and he worked closely with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) while doing this work.”
The Comstock laws eventually faded away as Americans decided they weren’t interested in allowing aggressive religious groups to screen their reading material. But the act, violations of which are punishable by five years in prison, was never formally repealed.
Could it come back? Some scholars believe so.
“All it takes is one person in the DOJ or some zealous U.S. attorney to threaten a clinic with criminal sanction under the Comstock Act, and that could potentially cause a tremendous chill among health care providers that are providing abortion,” Wendy Parmet, director of the Center for Health Policy and Law at Northeastern University in Boston, told NBC News.
Brace yourself. Our country may be about to take a giant step backward to the 19th century.
