A Plan to Outlaw Abortion Everywhere

The year 2022 was a triumphant one for the anti-abortion movement. After half a century, the Supreme Court did what had once seemed impossible when it overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping Americans of the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

- By Elaine Godfrey

Now movement activists are feeling bolder than ever: Their next goal will be ending legal abortion in America once and for all. A federal ban, which would require 60 votes in the Senate, is unlikely. But some activists believe there's a simpler way: the enforcement by a Trump Justice Department of a 150-year-old obscenity law.

The Comstock Act, originally passed in 1873 to combat vice and debauchery, prohibits the mailing of any "article or thing" that is "designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use." In the law's first 100 years, a series of court cases narrowed its scope, and in 1971, Congress removed most of its restrictions on contraception. But the rest of the Comstock Act has remained on the books. The law has sat dormant, considered virtually unenforceable, since the Roe v. Wade ruling in 1973.