The
sordid history of the über authoritarian prude, Anthony
Comstock, founder of the New York Society for the
Suppression of Vice, is unknown to most Americans today. It has been lost in the mists of time - until
recently- when a backward and reckless, Trump-appointed north Texas yokel "judge" invoked it.. This was as a basis for his ruling against the abortion pill,
Comstock was a fervent anti-sex Crusader who may well have been the most influential Victorian Age zealot. In his heyday, he proudly boasted of having taken responsibility for burning “fifty tons of books and millions of photos” (mostly female nudes - since they terrified him). Not to mention making 4,000 arrests and these resulting in no less than fifteen suicides. (He always rejoiced when any sexual pervert hung himself or jumped off a ledge so money was saved on the prosecution of the smut fiend).
He engineered most of this through The Comstock Act (March 3, 1873), which made it a felony to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail, including contraceptive devices and information. The materials could be as innocuous as an image of a woman in a girdle and bra from a Sears catalog. Thus, most porn purveyors today would have been tossed into stir for the images, videos they watch.
In
addition to banning contraceptives, Comstock’s act also banned the distribution
of information on abortion for educational purposes through
the U.S. mail. The bombastic, authoritarian swine who pushed for these
archaic laws,
http://www.nndb.com/people/230/000117876/
wanted nothing less than the mind control of all fellow citizens, as well as neutering their brains and gonads. Incredibly, though one might have thought his anti-sex jeremiads might be buried with his carcass, his legacy has survived and now been revived. This has been compliments of a cornpone Texas judge named Matthew Kacsmaryk. In his atrocity of a legal ruling last Friday, this justice pretender asserted "the Comstock Act bars mailing every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion or for any indecent or immoral purpose.” Hence, the abortion drug Mifepristone cannot and must not be sent to any woman, anywhere in the U.S.
"Many legal scholars see this invocation of the Comstock Act as legally dubious. As David S. Cohen, Greer Donley and Rachel Rebouché explain in the draft of a forthcoming article, circuit court cases in the 1930s found that the Comstock Act applies only to materials meant to be used unlawfully. But for judges hellbent on banning abortion, as we’ve seen, precedent doesn’t mean much. “The Comstock Act plainly forecloses mail-order abortion in the present,” wrote Kacsmaryk.
He added, “Defendants cannot immunize the illegality of their actions by pointing to a small window in the past where those actions might have been legal.”
Thankfully, on Friday, a Washington State judge issued a contradictory opinion to Kacsmaryk’s, ordering the F.D.A. to continue to make Mifepristone available. The ruling applied to the 36 states in which the drug is already legal. However, the clash between two courts has now set the stage for a likely Supreme Court showdown. But first, a DOJ appeal for a stay will go to the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. Don't hold your breath, the 5th circuit is dominated by Trumper judges and has already issued a slew of rightist rulings so they may well decline any stay while the ruling works its way through courts. But this will then set the "sub-stage" for the FDA to file its own suit given the Texas turkey's ruling has basically upended 20 years of FDA oversight. And if if can happen with this drug it can happen to any. (Viagra users take note!)
What if it does go to the Supreme Court? Legal scholar Mary Ziegler, cited by Ms. Goldberg, noted the Comstock emphasis could appeal to “self-proclaimed textualists” like Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. These two clowns emphasize the ordinary meaning of words in a statute, outside the context of legislative intent or history.
Should such a narrow reading of the Comstock Act by these two Supremes lead to a 5-4 ruling in favor, it could do vastly more than prohibit patients from getting Mifepristone by mail. According to Ziegler:
“Absent the narrowing construction applied by the federal circuit courts, the law’s plain terms could effectively ban all abortion nationwide because almost every pill, instrument or other item used in an abortion clinic or by a virtual abortion provider moves through the mail."
Make no mistake if this transpires a national firestorm will erupt as millions more Gen Z women register to vote. And it shouldn't need to be said that the Reeps will put one more nail in their electoral coffins for 2024. This following the last nail, i.e. in the Wisconsin judicial election.
See Also:
by Thom Hartmann | May 20, 2023 - 7:57am | permalink
You’ve probably never heard of Anthony Comstock, a Civil War Union soldier and New York Postmaster, who died in 1915. You need to learn about him and his legacy, however, as his long fingers are about to reach up out of the grave and wrap themselves around the necks of every American woman of childbearing years.
Anthony Comstock was a mama’s boy who hated sex. His mother died when he was 10 years old and the shock apparently never left him; women who didn’t live up to her ideal were his open and declared enemies, as were pornography, masturbation, and abortion. He was so ignorant of sex and reproduction that he believed a visible human-like fetus developed “within seconds” of sexual intercourse.
And:
by Amanda Marcotte | April 12, 2023 - 7:18am | permalink
The most crucial thing to understand in the aftermath of Friday's decision to rescind the FDA approval of Mifepristone by Donald Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk is this: It is not a ban on medication abortion in the U.S. Pill-induced abortions will still be available, even if this decision is allowed to stand. They will continue to be safe. But aborting a pregnancy without Mifepristone will just be a more miserable experience than it was before the far-right district court judge ignored all law and science to impose his anti-choice ideology on the health care access of millions of Americans.
And:
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