Comstock Act of 1873
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Search complete. 52 mentions across 24 episodes found for "Comstock Act of 1873".
Nov 9, 2026
Tucker CarlsonHOST
Right.
Bradley PierceGUEST
Yeah, by the bully pulpit, by also the Comstock Act.
Bradley PierceGUEST
It prohibits, it's been around for over 100 years, it prohibits the mailing of abortion pills, abortion medication, among a lot of other things.
Bradley PierceGUEST
And the Biden administration said, you know, we're not going to enforce that and put out a memo on that.
Bradley PierceGUEST
Yeah.
Tucker CarlsonHOST
And they, so what's happening is against federal law, but the administration is just allowing it to happen anyway? Exactly.
Bradley PierceGUEST
Because why? Because they're not enforcing the Comstock Act.
Bradley PierceGUEST
Can you do that? Not
Lizz WinsteadGUEST
And I was like, lips are sealed and look at, look where we're at, right? So yeah, kind of incredible.
Lizz WinsteadGUEST
So to answer your question, and there's somebody in the comments who's like, what about abortion? Are they going to use the Comstock Act? And I was like, yeah, that's one of the plans they're going to try to entail.
Lizz WinsteadGUEST
Well, explain maybe- What we can do, what we can't do with this new majority.
Pete DominickHOST
Yeah, yeah.
18 MINS LATER
Lizz WinsteadGUEST
You know, Lee Zeldin took that study and said, we're going to look into this.
Lizz WinsteadGUEST
Right now at the FDA, they're looking at – the FDA is creating its own study based on – Insurance codes, trying to fudge some things around that.
Lizz WinsteadGUEST
They're talking about using the Comstock Act.
Lizz WinsteadGUEST
187 members of the House and Senate signed an amicus brief to SCOTUS.
Quinn DelamaterHOST
Johnson told the press that while he can't change the law when it comes to abortion, he can, quote, cease using Texas abortion laws as an instrument of persecution and intimidation, harassment and political showboating.
Quinn DelamaterHOST
Of course, Texas has banned its doctors from sending Mifepristone by mail and is trying to stop other abortionists from mailing it into Texas, which is a violation of the federal Comstock Act.
Quinn DelamaterHOST
In other news, First Lady Melania Trump is bringing together representatives from Russia and Ukraine to recognize a recent six-day ceasefire she helped broker.
Quinn DelamaterHOST
The event, hosted at the White House Thursday morning, comes as U.S. officials try to secure a deal to end the conflict between the two countries.
Gordon RochfordHOST
Their roller coasters of pregnancy, childbirth, miscarriage, traumatic medical conditions, unwanted pregnancies, homemade abortions, which we'll talk about later on, and other multitudes of sexual and reproductive health problems inspired her to begin this program to help these women.
Gordon RochfordHOST
At the time, because of what is known as the Comstock Act, the discussion in publications of contraception or instructions on sexual reproductive health was punishable by law under an 1873 statute in the US on obscenity.
Gordon RochfordHOST
So to talk about contraception or the mechanics and biology of sexual reproduction for the format of education, was considered obscene by the American government and federally punishable by fines of up to $5,000, which is about $80,000 in today's money, and five years in a federal prison.
Gordon RochfordHOST
Can you fucking imagine that? Telling somebody, put a Johnny on it.
1 HR 2 MINS LATER
Betsy SpeerGUEST
So now I would presume that there were men and women giving and taking loads for decades who knew how to dodge a full load of baby batter and were counting their days and such.
Betsy SpeerGUEST
But this was the first official.
Betsy SpeerGUEST
And after it was published, Sanger was forced to flee the U.S. to Britain under obscenity laws, which were called the Comstock Act, which legally prohibited publishing materials about sexual intercourse.
Betsy SpeerGUEST
And contraception.
Claire PotterHOST
So I'm going with something really nerdy, which is I would like to see on day one, and I actually do know this legislation is, you know, kicking around the house and the Republicans wouldn't pick it up.
Claire PotterHOST
I want to see the 1873 Comstock Act repealed.
Claire PotterHOST
Now, listeners, if you do not know what the Comstock Act is, it was named after a guy named Anthony Comstock who hated sex, hated drink, hated women, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Claire PotterHOST
And what Comstock did was make it illegal to send things that he thought were morally corrupting through the mail.
Claire PotterHOST
And among those things were items that you could use to cause an abortion, whether that was a medication, whether that was an implement, something like that, birth control, pornography, a range of things that you know, subsequent court decisions made legal in the United States.
Claire PotterHOST
You know, we have a very robust First Amendment, which is why you can't shut down pornography.
Claire PotterHOST
And Republicans were trying to use the Comstock Act as a way of restricting abortion well beyond Dobbs states.
Claire PotterHOST
And that is because, of course, a great many women are now getting abortion via telemedicine.
JacHOST
So if they can't go and get the big abortion block, they can block the FDA's approval of that.
JacHOST
They're also trying to use the Comstock Act to block shipments of abortion medications and supply.
JacHOST
They're also making federal abortion funding restrictions, like restricting it even more so.
JacHOST
They're making it so that it's illegal in different states to get an abortion.
Thomas GloomHOST
In 1873, Comstock founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, backed by wealthy donors, and he took his campaign to Washington.
Thomas GloomHOST
Congress passed what became known as the Comstock Act in March of that year.
Thomas GloomHOST
It made it a crime to send, quote, obscene, lewd, or lascivious, unquote, material through the United States Mail.
Thomas GloomHOST
And the law didn't just stop at pornography.
6 MINS LATER
Thomas GloomHOST
He was 71.
Thomas GloomHOST
The law outlived him by a long time.
Thomas GloomHOST
By 1971, Congress had removed the contraception provisions from the Comstock Act, but the language about abortion stayed on the books.
Thomas GloomHOST
Then it came back.
Joe PojmanGUEST
And remember, when Justice Alito wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson, the case that overturned Roe v.
Joe PojmanGUEST
Wade, he said, that this decision doesn't he didn't say it goes back to the states he said it goes back to our elected officials let's remember the president and the members of congress are elected officials so this is really something that the congress can do we could get basically the president could ask all the the federal district attorneys to enforce the comstock act enforce this so that it would be enforced And it's a federal crime to to mail these abortion inducing drugs into Texas and in any other state.
Joe PojmanGUEST
And that would that would go that would do an enormous amount.
Joe PojmanGUEST
Now, let's get through these elections and see how we stand there.
Nadine StrossenGUEST
And in fact, was responsible for not only prosecutions of anybody who tried to say anything about sex or reproduction, reproductive issues that was inconsistent with his view of morality, but this led to confiscations of what we would now consider to be not only very tame materials, but even great works of literature that happened to have some reference to sexuality.
Nadine StrossenGUEST
And he was responsible, his name was given to the first federal anti-obscenity law, but the so-called Comstock law, which is still in effect and was used to suppress what we now consider to be great works of literature by authors such as James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.
Nadine StrossenGUEST
But this led to the prosecution and imprisonment of people who are simply giving accurate, trying to give accurate information about contraception, birth control.
Nadine StrossenGUEST
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was imprisoned a couple of times under the Comstock laws.
Nadine StrossenGUEST
And unfortunately, a big portion of that law is still in effect.
Nadine StrossenGUEST
and has actually been cited in recent cases in which states that have not have removed any protection for most protections for abortion, that has made most abortions illegal, are trying to prevent and to prosecute even the distribution of information from other states where abortion is still legal into those states and have been relying on the Comstock Law.
Nadine StrossenGUEST
So Anthony Comstock is doing a lot of damage, not only to free speech, but also to autonomy and women's rights more broadly.
Nadine StrossenGUEST
Other villains.
BeaHOST
So we have all of these types of things happening all at once around the late 1800s, early 1900s.
BeaHOST
Then we have our Comstock Act, which we've talked about previously.
BeaHOST
We mentioned it in the pill episode, one of the real pieces of legislation that made birth control more than just a medical question, but also one about censorship.
BeaHOST
It criminalized the mailing of materials deemed obscene.
5 MINS LATER
BeaHOST
Yeah, for sure.
BeaHOST
So her mother's experience, along with what she witnessed as a nurse on New York's Lower East Side, plus what she learned in her travels to Europe, motivated her belief that contraception should be more available and women needed the practical ability to decide when and whether to become pregnant.
BeaHOST
In 1914, she started publishing The Women Rebel, a feminist publication that promoted women's control over reproduction and brought her face-to-face with the Comstock Act.
BeaHOST
Frequently.
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