Democrats will stop at nothing to continue to push for laws that allow women to kill their unborn children. That’s why some Senate Democrats are working to unravel a 150-year-old law that could impact “abortion by mail.”
Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith (D) announced the legislation on Thursday. The bill was brought forward in case former President Donald Trump wins reelection and invokes the Comstock Act, which prohibits abortion-related materials from being sent via mail.
“There is a very clear, well-organized plan afoot by the MAGA Republicans to use Comstock as a tool to ban medication abortion, and potentially all abortions,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who on Thursday plans to introduce legislation to repeal the Comstock Act’s abortion provisions. “My job is to take that tool away.”
Other Democrats, like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV) have signed onto the legislation. Democrat Vermont Rep. Becca Balint will introduce companion legislation in the House.
“I’m not going to take a watch-and-see, laissez-faire attitude,” Balint said. “We can and we have to take Republicans at their word that they want a federal ban.”
Predictably, pro-abortion organizations are supporting the measure (via The Washington Post):
The campaign is receiving support from major advocacy groups, including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union and Reproductive Freedom for All. The legislation, which Smith’s office crafted after consulting with the Justice Department, would preserve aspects of the law that allow officials to crack down on child pornography.
Not all Democrats agree that attempting to repeal the Comstock Act’s abortion provisions should be an election-year priority, worried it will distract from the party’s existing efforts to protect abortion access and to focus voters’ attention on reproductive health issues. While President Biden has heavily campaigned on Republicans’ efforts to limit abortion, he has not endorsed repealing Comstock and has avoided focusing on the law.
Some advocates predict that the legislation is doomed in a divided Congress, highlighting the defeats of recent bills to protect access to contraception and in vitro fertilization.
Last week, Townhall covered how the United States Supreme Court ruled that a group of doctors did not have the legal standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of mifepristone, the drug that causes a pregnant woman to have an abortion.
Since the fallout of Roe v. Wade, the issue of “telemedicine” abortions became a larger issue. A majority of Americans oppose this, according to a Marist/Knights of Columbus poll. According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, medication abortions account for the majority of abortions in the United States. When these drugs are sent through the mail, pregnant women never see a doctor in-person before they terminate their pregnancy.