Democrats have a chance to corner Republicans on an unpopular issue – and defend a modern and egalitarian society
They don’t need Congress. The anti-abortion movement is preparing to ban abortion nationwide as soon as a Republican takes the White House, and under a bizarre legal theory, they don’t think they even need congressional approval to do it. That’s because anti-choice radicals have begun to argue that an 1873 anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Act, effectively bans the mailing, sale, advertisement or distribution of any drug or implement that can be used to cause an abortion.
For a long time, this was a fringe theory, only heard in the corners of the anti-choice movement with the most misogynist zealotry and the flimsiest concerns for reason. After all, the Comstock Act has not been enforced for more than half a century: many of its original provisions, banning contraception, were overturned; other elements, banning pornography and other “obscene” material, have been essentially nullified on free speech grounds.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
