In mifepristone case, justices quiz lawyers on the Comstock Act
Newsy
Supreme Court arguments in a medicated abortion case are shining a spotlight on a key federal obscenity law.
At the Supreme Court Tuesday, justices quizzed lawyers about an obscure 19th century law that has become the next front in the legal contest over abortion rights.
“How do you respond to an argument that mailing your product and advertising it would violate the Comstock Act?” Justice Clarence Thomas asked Jessica Ellsworth, the attorney representing New York-based Danco Laboratories — maker of the abortion drug mifepristone, the FDA approval of which the court is reviewing.
That the Supreme Court is paying attention shows how provisions of a law some considered “dead” can return to the legal front lines, said Mary Ziegler, a University of California at Davis law professor who has written about the act.
In the two years since the court’s decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe vs. Wade it’s become clear that federal legislation banning abortion outright has little chance of passing the U.S. Senate — where Democrats and some Republicans oppose such restrictions — without a political sea change.
Anti-abortion groups hope they can use long-unenforced language from Comstock to fight abortion rights in the courts, and under future Republican presidential administrations to restrict the distribution of medications used in abortions.
