Buried deep in the Project 2025 plan, on page 594, is the far-right’s plot to enact a national abortion ban.
Project 2025 is the extremist manifesto for a second Donald Trump Administration, authored by the Heritage Foundation, and it would undermine our democracy and its institutions, raise prices and hurt the middle class, and severely restrict access to abortion and reproductive care. Don’t just take my word for it.
This attack on reproductive choice specifically targets abortion medication, and incredibly, it is rooted in the misapplication of a 150-year-old law: “Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs,” the plan reads, “there is now no federal prohibition on the enforcement of [The Comstock Act]. The Department of Justice in the next conservative Administration should therefore announce its intent to enforce federal law against providers and distributors of such pills.”
If you have never heard of The Comstock Act, that’s reasonable. It is what’s known as a “zombie law” – an archaic statute that remains on the books, but is thought to be unconstitutional and unenforceable.
Comstock was passed in 1873. That’s nearly 50 years before women even had the right to vote. The law bans the mailing and receiving of obscene matter, as well as instruments used by medical professionals in abortions. When Roe v. Wade established a woman’s legal right to an abortion in 1973, Comstock was essentially deemed irrelevant.
That all changed when the conservative Supreme Court overturned Roe and punted abortion rights to the states. Now, through Project 2025, the anti-abortion MAGA movement is planning to resurrect Comstock, and misuse it to ban Mifepristone -- a common, safe, and effective abortion medication -- and enforce what could ultimately become a national ban on abortion.
This strategy was raised by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in the recent case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, where extremists sued to block access to Mifepristone. While the Supreme Court allowed the abortion pill to stay on the market while the case proceeds, this will not be the final attempt to ban it.
So Congress needs to act before it’s too late.
That’s why I just helped introduce the Stop Comstock Act, a bill that would repeal provisions of Comstock – notably, its prohibition on the mailing of medication or material used to perform abortion procedures.
Federal appellate courts have uniformly held that the law does not apply to lawful abortion care. It’s time for Congress to update the law before a right-wing administration could misapply Comstock to ban abortion nationwide, even in states like New Jersey.
We also need to address the underlying problem that allowed Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA to make it to the Supreme Court in the first place.
Three months after Roe v. Wade was decided, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine was incorporated in Amarillo, Tex., and shortly thereafter began legal action against the FDA. The suit, filed by the so-called Alliance Defending Freedom – a right-wing extremist legal advocacy group – went to the Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas, which has a single judge named Matthew Kacsmaryk.
It was a strategic choice – known as “judge shopping” – to file a case in a court with only one judge, especially a far-right jurist. Appointed by Trump and a favorite of MAGA legal advocates and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Kacsmaryk is known for his staunchly right-wing views against abortion and contraception, LGBTQ rights, gun safety measures, and even no-fault divorce.
That’s why after this case was filed, I took action and introduced the End Judge Shopping Act – which would end this practice where right-wing litigants cherry-pick single-judge divisions to get a favorable outcome in their cases. We need to close this loophole so they cannot game the system to secure a national injunction on important issues like contraception, abortion, and other important federal policies.
Comstock’s consequences for American women are grave. I will continue fighting to protect abortion rights for women – through the courts, for military servicewomen who serve in states with abortion bans, and for women in states across the country. They deserve nothing less than full reproductive freedom under the law.
