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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsClarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dust off 150-year-old Comstock Act to target abortion rights
Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dust off 150-year-old Comstock Act to target abortion rightsA majority of justices on the nine-member court on Tuesday were sceptical that a group of anti-abortion doctors have sufficient legal grounds to bring the case against the US Food and Drug Administration, which first approved the drug mifepristone in the year 2000.
But during Tuesdays oral arguments in a case targeting the drug, at least two conservative justices floated the idea of dusting off a 151-year-old law that abortion rights advocates fear could be used to further strip access in the aftermath of the Supreme Courts 2022 decision to revoke Americans constitutional right to abortion care.
The Comstock Act of 1873 targeted the mailing of contraceptives, pornography and any drug intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use. It largely floundered under a series of congressional actions and the Supreme Courts ruling in Roe v Wade 100 years later, but anti-abortion activists as well as a federal judge who agreed to ban mifepristone, triggering the latest Supreme Court battle have invoked the law following a decades-long anti-abortion crusade from conservative Christian legal groups.
A case before the Supreme Court argues that the FDA wrongfully approved mifepristone for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, and then improperly eliminated requirements that the drug should only be dispensed in person.
On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito who wrote the 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade suggested that the FDA should have considered Comstock.
Justice Clarence Thomas later suggested that the manufacturer of the mifepristone drug Mifeprex may have a Comstock problem. He said it specifically covers drugs such as yours.
Deep State Witch
(10,472 posts)To the 19th century.
getagrip_already
(14,949 posts)If we get a speaker Jeffries, this should absolutely be one of the first bills he tees up.
We have to get rid of this time bomb.
limbicnuminousity
(1,407 posts)In the June/July 1878 issue, she ran a notice for a new item to be sold to Physiologist readers. It was called the Comstock Syringe. The ad stated that it was the same one Sara had sold Comstock himself. It was especially adapted to purposes of cleanliness, and the cure and prevention of disease. Sara concluded, We trust that the sudden popularity brought to this valuable syringe by the benevolent agency of the enterprising Mr. Comstock, will prove to suffering womanhood the most beneficent act of his illustrious life.
A later Comstock syringe ad mentioned her lawsuit as a selling point, to let purchasers know that to buy a douche named after Comstock was a form of political action. It said the syringe was used by married women for the judicious and healthy regulation of the female functions (ode for preventing pregnancy) and was a Blessing to Womankind.
Comstock was so furious to see a vaginal douche being advertised under his name that he got a different grand jury to indict her, without informing them that her case had previously been dismissed. The assistant district attorney secured a nolle prosequi, declining to prosecute, and admonished him for withholding information and not going through the proper channels.
More at: https://lithub.com/how-anthony-comstock-enemy-to-women-of-the-gilded-age-attempted-to-ban-contraception/
Alito continues in his tradition of referring to theocratic misogynists throughout history as a means for envisioning the future.
NickB79
(19,292 posts)So we have two USSC justices on record as being partial to banning all those things as well.
Run ads on TV pointing this out. Hang the GOP with their judges.
bdamomma
(63,959 posts)if they prohibit all these things, there will be hell to pay.
LiberalFighter
(51,284 posts)Received many issues of Penthouse and other publications back when I was much younger.
limbicnuminousity
(1,407 posts)The Texas obscenity statute is a statute prohibiting the sale of sex toys in Texas. The law was introduced in 1973, and was last updated in 2003. While the law was never formally repealed, in 2008 a U.S. District Judge released a report declaring it to be "facially unconstitutional and unenforceable." -wiki
The Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act criminalizes the sale of sex toys in Alabama. And were not talking about kinkier stuff like double sided sex toys. Even the modest, classic vibrator is completely illegal. Due to its harshness, the law has generated a lot of controversy and serious debates across the US. -https://www.halt.org/love-laws-in-the-us-that-are-so-unbelievable-yet-real
In Georgia, you need to have a scientific or medical reason in order to buy a sex toy. The law led to a lawsuit that a lady by the name of Melissa Davenport brought on against the city of Sandy Springs. Unfortunately for Melissa, the federal appeals court ruled out in favor of the law and turned down her claim. -https://www.halt.org/love-laws-in-the-us-that-are-so-unbelievable-yet-real
Ping Tung
(765 posts)Speaking of returning to old "Traditional Family Values".
bdamomma
(63,959 posts)that is just sick.
Hekate
(91,003 posts)The ducking stool? Burning at the stake?
Back in Colonial times, midwives & herbalists had preparations to bring on the menses and regulate the menses and could advertise them in newspapers.
I keep thinking of that turn of phrase. What else is Mifepristone but a means of privately bringing on the menses in the very early stages of pregnancy?
looking at your pictures there of Offred the Handmaid is what they are wishing for.
WE are not going back!!!!!!!!!
Hekate
(91,003 posts)about womens necessary medical treatment, you know theres hope.
DBoon
(22,421 posts)
Comstock was also opposed to woman suffragists, notably Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin. The men's journal The Days' Doings popularized images of the sisters for three years and was instructed by its editor (while Comstock was present) to stop producing lewd images. Comstock also took legal action against the paper for advertising contraceptives. After the sisters published an exposé of an adulterous affair between the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton, he had the sisters arrested under laws forbidding the use of the postal service to distribute "obscene material", specifically citing a mangled quotation from the Bible that Comstock found obscene. They were later acquitted of the charges.[16]
Less fortunate was Ida Craddock, who died by suicide on the eve of reporting to federal prison for distributing via the U.S. mail various sexually explicit marriage manuals that she had written.[16] Her final work was a lengthy public suicide note specifically condemning Comstock.
Comstock also arrested the prominent abortion provider Madame Restell. In 1878, he posed as a customer seeking birth control for his wife. Restell provided him with pills and he returned the next day with the police, and arrested her. Rather than face the resulting trial, she committed suicide soon after it began.[17]
Through his various campaigns, he destroyed 15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing "objectionable" books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures.[5] He claimed that "books are feeders for brothels."[18]
Comstock boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests[19] and claimed he drove 15 persons to suicide in his "fight for the young".[20]
(my bolding)
He was also an influence on a young law student named J. Edgar Hoover, who showed interest in his causes and methods
Comstock would fit in perfectly with today's Republican Party
all the more reason we have to VOTE them out or expand the SC.
jls4561
(1,268 posts)Long Dong Silver and the rest of a younger Clarence s porn collection must have been shipped via USPS or UPS or DHL or something similar.
I believe you, Anita!
BlueKota
(1,860 posts)congressional enablers because it's too old and vague. Republicans are never ones to let hypocrisy stand in their way. Yet we are supposed to just trust they won't let their orange messiah skate. That's like jumping in crocodile invested waters and thinking you're not going to end up as a lunch buffet.
BlueKota
(1,860 posts)has had more than a few porn and sex objects shipped to him as well but he won't likely get charged because he, Clarance and Sammy don't have to follow the law like the rest of us less than equal people.
MOMFUDSKI
(5,772 posts)like they did witches?