Abortion, Contraception, and the Comstock Law’s Original Medical Exemption, 1873–1936

The Comstock Act of 1873 was not meant to be, nor did it ever function as, a total abortion ban. 1 This fact is important to emphasize in our current political moment because those who want to revive the statute have argued that the Comstock Act is an existing (if dormant) law that already bans abortion on a federal level. They have also argued that the law completely outlawed abortion in the past. 2 The statute’s legislative and enforcement history, however, tells a different story. It was first and foremost a law about obscenity and sexual purity. 3 It contained provisions for outlawing abortion and contraception, but the bill’s author, Anthony Comstock, along with his fellow vice crusaders, were mostly concerned about controlling illicit sexuality and censoring sexual material. From the beginning, the law was inconsistently and less often applied to violations involving abortion and contraception than it was against other forms of obscenity. 4