In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the fight against abortion has played out on two fronts: political efforts to implement bans in individual red states and legal efforts to prohibit the use of abortion pills everywhere.
But anti-abortion activists have their eyes on a bigger prize: If former President Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House, they hope and expect that he’ll effectively ban abortions throughout the United States by prohibiting the shipment not just of abortion drugs, but any tools doctors could use to induce an abortion.
They’re pinning their hopes on the Comstock Act, a series of laws enacted in 1873 that prohibit the shipment of “every article or thing designed, adapted or intended for producing abortion.” The law was essentially unenforceable during the Roe era, but a federal judge in Texas ruled in 2023 that the Comstock Act prohibits the shipment of the two drugs used in more than half of all abortions today.