The FFRF Action Fund is raising the alarm about a coordinated anti-abortion campaign to revive a 19th-century law with the aim of blocking the mailing of abortion medication nationwide.
Family Research Council, a Christian nationalist outfit, recently circulated a letter signed by 40 Southern Baptist leaders urging President Trump to “instruct the Department of Justice to enforce the Comstock Act.” The theocratic activist Alabama Citizens Action Program publicly amplified that demand, calling on federal authorities to invoke the archaic 1873 law to “help protect states’ rights to enforce their abortion pill laws.”
That push came on the heels of a July 29 letter shockingly signed by 16 Republican attorneys general, representing almost a third of all states, asking congressional leaders to preempt the “shield laws” protecting blue-state providers that legally mail abortion medication to patients in states with bans. This demand is designed to trap patients and clinicians within the borders of states with abortion bans.
This pressure campaign is not ad hoc — it tracks directly with the theocratic Project 2025 blueprint. Project 2025’s Department of Justice chapter explicitly urges a campaign (p. 562) to enforce the Comstock Act against providers and distributors of abortion pills that use the mail, while its Health and Human Services chapter advises the Food and Drug Administration to reverse approval of abortion pills and to “stop promoting or approving (p. 459)” abortion by mail in violation of “long-standing federal laws (p. 459)” governing mailing and interstate commerce.
“This is a clear, escalating strategy to weaponize an antediluvian, theocratic statute passed at the behest of one of the 19th century’s most zealous misogynists,” charges Annie Laurie Gaylor, president of the FFRF Action Fund. “Let’s be plain: Reviving Comstock is an end-run around state legislatures and voters to impose one set of religious beliefs on everyone. We will fight any attempt to substitute sectarian dogma for secular law — and we urge Congress to shut this down by repealing Comstock.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has long warned that a second Trump administration and its allies would target medication abortion via Comstock and has consistently opposed efforts to roll back reproductive liberty on religious grounds.
The FFRF Action Fund has gotten behind proactive solutions. It has applauded the legislation that Congressional Freethought Caucus member Becca Balint, D-Vt., has introduced to repeal the Comstock Act. And the Fund’s Dynamic House Scorecard for the 119th Congress has included co-sponsorship of the Stop Comstock Act as a priority measure to defend the separation of state and church.
The possible revival of the Comstock Act needs to be combated vigorously.
FFRF Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization that develops and advocates for legislation, regulations and government programs to preserve the constitutional principle of separation between state and church. It also advocates for the rights and views of nonbelievers, endorses candidates for political office, and publicizes the views of elected officials concerning religious liberty issues.