Both the White House and the Justice Department held closed-door meetings this month with anti-abortion activists who want the president to use executive power more aggressively to cut off access to the procedure. … Students for Life emerged from its own meeting with DOJ officials optimistic, and sent a video message to its followers that … Read more
Last week, as they awaited word from the high court about the fate of telehealth abortions, anti-abortion activists secured a closed-door meeting with Justice Department officials. There, they pushed the agency to revive a long dormant policy that could cut off virtually all access to both mifepristone and misoprostol — an 1800s-era anti-vice law known … Read more
Although untouched by the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, misoprostol is not necessarily immune to legal attacks. Louisiana’s lawsuit and parallel suits filed by Florida and Missouri argue that the Comstock Act—a dormant, 19th-century anti-obscenity statute that anti-abortion legal strategists have spent years working to resurrect—bars the mailing of any drug used to induce abortion. This reading … Read more
Texas’ new legislation, by design, will be difficult to preemptively challenge, as it’s enforced by ordinary citizens. A legal clash is likely only after someone is sued under it. “They’re trying to provoke a fight over the Comstock Act,” Hill said, referencing an 1873 federal law banning the mailing of abortifacients that the anti-abortion movement … Read more
The Comstock Act is a “zombie law”: Though long considered unconstitutional or unenforceable, it was never repealed and, with enough momentum, could be resuscitated and enforced. Interpreted literally, “it could essentially shut down abortion nationwide,” explains Joanne Rosen, JD, MA, a practice professor in Health Policy and Management and an expert in reproductive law. Read more … Read more
A Texas man is suing a California doctor over his girlfriend’s alleged abortion across state lines — the latest in a string of cases meant to test the laws that have helped people get care. Read more at 19th News
Wrongful death suit alleges that California doctor mailed the pills to Texas, where virtually all abortions are outlawed Read more at The Guardian
If passed and signed into law, the measure would introduce civil liabilities for distributors of abortion pills and create a civil liability for “the wrongful death of an unborn child” as a result of taking the medications — and empower the “biological father of the unborn child” to file those civil lawsuits. It would also … Read more
Under President Joe Biden, the Justice Department said it did not believe Comstock prohibited mailing these pills. But abortion opponents have been pressing the Trump administration to change that policy. The Supreme Court’s most conservative members, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, have also expressed openness to that legal interpretation. That approach, too, could spark … Read more
If Bondi bites, as legal experts Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo explained at Rewire News, that opens the door for a broad Christian nationalist agenda outlined in Project 2025 to terrorize people for providing birth control, sex toys, or even sex education materials. The document argues that prosecutors can revive the Comstock Act, a … Read more
