Last Friday, the Supreme Court upheld more than 20 years of Food and Drug Administration approval for mifepristone, one of two drugs that have been prescribed together for decades in the United States to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Suspended lower court judgments that have been reversed. The ruling temporarily maintains access to safe and effective abortion drugs pending appeals.
Two weeks earlier, Texas District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of the Hippocratic Medical Alliance, a group of anti-abortion organizations and physicians seeking to withdraw FDA approval of mifepristone. The Justice Department and drug maker Danko Laboratories immediately appealed the decision. About a week later, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partially suspended judgment, upholding mifepristone’s approval and limiting its distribution by mail. A Supreme Court ruling has now removed that limitation.
Kacsmaryk’s original decision and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision cited a 19th-century law known as the Comstock Act of 1873, which allowed not only nude paintings but also related materials and information. It made it illegal to mail “obscene, obscene, obscene” material, including For abortion or contraception. The legislation was led by Anthony Comstock, a Christian moral activist and president of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Congress passed a law appointing Comstock as a special agent for the U.S. Postal Service and giving him the power to arrest people for violations. Comstock eventually became a public laughingstock for his prudence, and the Supreme Court overturned his 1965 contraceptive law restrictions. in Supreme Court records.
Science journalist and author Annaleigh Newitz has spent years researching and interviewing people about the Comstock Act and Comstock itself for her 2019 novel. Alternate timeline futurecharacters time travel to try to prevent Comstock from passing the law. Scientific American We spoke with Newitz about the history their research uncovered and how 150-year-old obscenity laws are being used to limit abortion and reproductive rights in the 21st century.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
Who was Anthony Comstock and how did the Comstock Act come about?
Anthony Comstock was a very famous moral crusader based in New York [City] Mid 19th century. His career began largely because he was interested in rooting out obscenity. Obscenity meant any image. [or literature] Anything that contains nudity. He was extreme at the time, but at one point managed to connect with the New York City YMCA, which was also against what they called “obscenity.” Connecting with them gave him access to many powerful New Yorkers who could fund the campaign. , stems from its ability to regulate cross-state communications.
Sending obscene material by mail is prohibited by law. Comstock was enforcing the law by ordering thousands of items via email, from birth control pills and sex toys to erotic images and abortion pills. [substances that end a pregnancy]And after receiving the goods, he prosecuted those who sent them. He targeted people known for selling raw materials, but more importantly those who were selling all sorts of information related to education, not obscenities. I was doing it. about contraception and abortion. The Comstock Act was actually a First Amendment exemption act. It was an obscenity law. What can I say and what can I pass in an email. Under it, any information or material related to reproductive health, abortion, or sex education was classified as obscene.
This is a very different model from how abortion is understood in the modern world, as abortion was precariously quasi-legalized under the Fourth Amendment in the 1970s under privacy laws. So, basically, to the extent that we started to introduce the Comstock Act, [a set of laws including and related to the Comstock Act] When they return, they will completely end any of the laws we have made since that time to protect people’s ability to have abortions. Because it’s not about privacy. It’s about obscenity.
In the early 20th century, there was a meme started by playwright George Bernard Shaw. new york times By the late 19th century, many modern-day young people thought Comstock was an idiot, even though the law was in force. These included those reading presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull’s popular newspaper, Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly. George Bernard Shaw said America is suffering from “Comstock”. He used the term to refer to the censorship and puritanical nature of American art, but it has become a meme. People began using “Comstockery” to make fun of all kinds of art, storytelling, writing, and antiquated, puritanical politics.
How have the Comstock Act and related laws evolved over time?
The Comstock Act was basically actively used until the 1960s, which is shocking. And he saw a revolution in understanding what obscenity was in the 1970s, when a sort of realignment of the First Amendment took place in the Supreme Court. In the early 20th century, this idea of his Comstockery became very popular. The law is considered obsolete. And while they’re not really taken out of the book, they’re largely ignored. increase.
In the 1930s, several rulings on the Comstock Act broadened its application to various types of birth control, but at the same time, it was also used to prevent people from sending abortion drugs for illegal use. limited how the law could be used. Back in the 1930s, there was this limit that counted under the Comstock Act only if you sent something to someone knowingly. [to illegally abort a pregnancy]Then, in the 1950s, the Comstock Act was expanded to include any substance that could lead to abortion.
Then, in the early 1970s, the Privacy Act was passed, putting reproductive health under privacy. Nearly every attorney I’ve ever spoken to about this is very knowledgeable about reproductive rights and says, “Why did we do that?” As we have seen, this was a very shaky ruling. [with last year’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade]But at the time it seemed like a good idea. But, of course, the process meant that these Comstock laws remained on the books in many places.
of Alternate timeline future, the characters go back in time to try to stop the Comstock Act. When you wrote this book, did you expect these laws to be used in court decisions like the recent Mifepristone case?
Absolutely not. I’m probably the only one who wrote a time travel story trying to overthrow Comstock. But there are many people who are legal experts and obscenity experts, and their research I have read over the years is that laws protecting the right to abortion and the right to contraception are very said to be unstable. What we really need to do is enact laws that abortion is legal and birth control is legal. But what we continue to do for Comstock as a country is, ‘Oh, we don’t want people to have abortion rights. Why not just say, and avoid talking about the issue?” And what that means is that we continue to allow women to become second-class citizens at any time.
How did Comstock use the courts and other means to carry out his agenda?
Comstock in the 19th century, I was going to use surveillance. Use this brand new position in the postal service. [to police what he called obscenity]He also had a sort of sub-oppressor army. He ran this organization called the New York Society for Corruption Suppression that sounded like something out of Marvel Comics. And they were making these arrests all the time. So it’s very similar to what you get from using a coat. But it also comes from abusing police power. Because these were the people who were like quasi-police officers to find out who was the abortion provider. Comstock once reported breaking into the home of someone who was performing an abortion and dragging him and her patient to the police station, claiming that when she arrived at the police station, he said the woman was “very I explained that I was sick.
It all ties in with many of the same issues we grapple with today: What kind of books should children read? What should be the powers of the police? What is the role of the courts? mosquito? But the funny thing is, they’re picking mifepristone, so I think it’s going to get some really interesting backlash from probably an unexpected source, probably the pharmaceutical industry. Like, ‘This is going to go after our earnings’. I could easily see the judge saying, “You shouldn’t send Viagra.” [by mail] It’s not for breeding. ”
The situation could be similar to what Comstock faced in the 19th century. At the time, he was really trying to prevent abortion and sex education. However, because he pursued art that included nudity, he felt that he was suppressing free expression and the expression of innocent intellectual curiosity, and he ended up angering many very powerful people.
What happened to Comstock itself?
He was basically laughed at from a seat of power. By the time he died, he was thought to be just a joke. Shortly after he died, Margaret Sanger began setting up a clinic, which eventually became Planned Parenthood. So even that aspect of his job is crushing under the wheels of this new era of family planning.
Given that the Comstock Act is used to track the distribution of abortion pills, could it also be used to track birth control?
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s exactly why pharmaceutical companies are standing up, paying attention, and sending out briefs. So they use abortion pills as an excuse to attack various medical interventions. [Editor’s Note: Congress repealed the parts of the Comstock Act dealing with contraceptives in 1971.]
If you could go back in time and rewrite the book, how would you write the next chapter of this story?
As I was writing this book, I was thinking about how Comstock’s strategy has continued to this day. But the bulk of my book is about the strategy of resistance and hope, and indeed how Comstock was soundly defeated.Not only was his law ignored [after a series of Supreme Court decisions strictly limiting their application], but he was also a laughing stock. The way it happened was that a very different group of people came together. It shows that he had a cause in common with the woman. Comstock tried to close one of his exhibits at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair that wore belly dancers, but he thought belly dancing was obscene. These aren’t groups that usually hang out together, but they got together.
That’s why I think it’s really interesting to see power players coming together. [to oppose restrictions on abortion]We see people resisting in the name of feminism and queer rights…. It may become. I think we’re seeing the beginning of a new kind of resistance that unites powerful capitalists and powerful politicians with the marginalized people who are victims of these Comstock laws. So there’s a lot of hope. I think.
