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This piece first appeared in our weekly publication, The Fallout.
We’re only a few brief weeks out from oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medication—the Supreme Courtroom case that would resurrect the Comstock Act and severely curtail entry to treatment abortion on this nation—and conservative lawmakers have made their place on the case very clear. Not solely does the Comstock Act prohibit telehealth and delivery drugs for treatment abortion, even in states the place the apply is authorized, but it surely prohibits delivery something associated to abortion and contraception.
In different phrases, Republican members of Congress simply declared with their entire chest to the American public that there’s a federal regulation they consider could possibly be used to shut clinics nationwide and de facto ban abortion. So, can somebody please clarify to me why, in a presidential election cycle particularly, Democrats aren’t attempting to do one thing—something—about this?
Right here’s the factor about federal statutes just like the Comstock Act: They are often repealed. Let me say that once more. There’s a clear reply to Republicans’ try and reanimate this Reconstruction-era purity regulation to ban abortion nationwide. Repeal it.
There’s no assure that an effort to attempt to repeal the Comstock Act would assure that the repeal truly occurs, particularly with this Congress. However the whole lack of effort—hell, even the whole lack of a public dialog round any potential Comstock repair—is, with one small and uncommon exception, utterly lacking from Democrats and the Biden Administration.
By the tip of this month, we must always have a fairly good sense of how critically the conservatives on the Supreme Courtroom intend to learn the Comstock Act and the way far anti-abortion advocates intend to push it. If Democrats in Congress wait for much longer to even have interaction within the Comstock dialog, they must reply for his or her full unreadiness for a nationwide abortion ban.
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