Letter to Congress: Hold a vote on the Stop Comstock Act

Senator Chuck Schumer,
Majority Leader
United States Senate

Dear Leader Schumer,

Ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republicans have worked tirelessly in state after state to restrict and eliminate access to abortion. But they intend to go even further: In published interviews and in the Project 2025 blueprint for a future Trump administration, they make it clear that they will misapply the Comstock Act of 1873 to ban abortion nationwide. Project 2025’s playbook “explicitly directs the [Department of Justice] to enforce Comstock against ‘providers and distributors’ of medication abortion,” a method now used in more than two thirds of all abortions before 12 weeks gestation.

The Stop Comstock Act, introduced in June by Senators Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and 20 of your colleagues would eliminate this threat and ensure that Comstock can never be used to criminalize abortion care.

We urge you to hold a vote on the Stop Comstock Act at the earliest possible date, killing this zombie law once and for all, or, at the very least, putting Republicans on the record about their support for a backdoor national abortion ban.

When first enacted, Comstock prohibited the United States Postal Service (USPS) from transporting “anything designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.” A revived Comstock would also apply to other common carriers such as United Parcel Service and Federal Express. And while in 1971 Congress repealed the part of the Act that banned shipping contraceptives, it is clear that a far right with no regard for the rule of law would deploy Comstock to do what it can’t otherwise achieve through Congress. 

The right has made it abundantly clear that it is reaching for the Comstock Act as the next arrow in its anti-abortion quiver. In March, as the Supreme Court considered a case that threatened the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-long approval of the safe, effective abortion drug mifepristone, 145 Republican members of Congress signed onto a brief asking the court to cite the Comstock Act in order to deny people access to it. As if that didn’t make their intentions clear enough, Jonathan Mitchell, one of Trump’s personal lawyers and the co-author and legal defender of the law that cut off Texans’ access to abortion a year before the Dobbs decision, said outright that “We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books.”

And the threat doesn’t stop with abortion; Republicans could misapply the law to go after everything from birth control to clean needle exchange and HIV prevention technologies and to gender-affirming care. This would be catastrophic: Bans on abortion and gender affirming care are already driving public health crises in states like Texas, where both infant deaths and maternal deaths are rising. 

Donald Trump recently tried to backtrack and say that he “generally” wouldn’t enforce the Comstock Act to limit access to medication abortion. That comment only heightens our concerns for three key reasons:

1. Donald Trump is a liar. He’s lied countless times before and this is no different.
2. It shows that Trump is actively considering the use of the Comstock Act, which has been functionally dormant for nearly a century.
3. Trump is too late for these denials; his anti-abortion allies have already given away the game. Any attempt by Trump to distance himself is just a ploy to get through the election and carry out the right’s radical agenda.

Election results over the past two years starkly underscore that the American people overwhelmingly support individual rights to abortion, contraception, and fertility care. And now, Trump and his accomplices are worried. Jonathan Mitchell made that abundantly clear when he said, in reference to the use of Comstock, “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”

Dobbs was only the beginning of the far right’s campaign to ban abortion. A national ban has always been their goal, and they clearly see Comstock as their fastest path to get there. Trump often boasts about Dobbs and lauds the dangerous Supreme Court as a crown jewel of his administration. The individuals Trump has lined up for a future administration are eager to weaponize the Comstock Act as soon as they can. We must stop them now.

We urge you to force abortion opponents to show their hand. Put the Stop Comstock Act up for a vote and block them from weaponizing this dangerous law before it is too late.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Take Back the Court Action Fund
Healthcare Across Borders
Abortion Access Front
Lawyers for Good Government
UltraViolet Action
Access Reproductive Justice
Center for Genetics and Society
Chicago Women’s AIDS Project
Health Not Prisons Collective
Positive Women’s Network-USA
Good Health Community Programmes