[[link removed]] Ms. Memo: This Week in Women's Rights
January 18, 2023
From the ongoing fight for abortion rights and access, to elections, to the drive for the Equal Rights Amendment, there are a multitude of battles to keep up with. In this weekly roundup, find the absolute need-to-know news for feminists.
The Postal Service Can Deliver Abortion Pills by Mail—Even in States Banning Abortion [[link removed]]
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A United States Postal Service employee with a parcel sorting machine in Melville, N.Y., on on Dec. 12, 2022. The Justice Department issued a legal opinion that USPS may deliver abortion pills to people in states that have banned or restricted abortion. (Alejandra Villa Loarca / Newsday RM via Getty Images)
BY CARRIE N. BAKER | Last November, conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit asking a Texas court to ban abortion pills from the U.S. mail. The suit cited an archaic 19th-century anti-obscenity law: the 1873 Comstock Law. Promoted by anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock and described as a “chastity” law, it banned sending obscene literature, contraceptives, abortifacients or any sexual information through U.S. mail.
After the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that women have a fundamental right to abortion, the Comstock Law remained on the books but was not enforced. Now that the Supreme Court has reversed Roe, the question was: Does that law now ban mailing abortion pills?
In response to a request for clarification from the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a legal opinion made public on Jan. 3 stating that the Comstock Law does not prohibit mailing abortion pills if the sender does not know that the medications will be used illegally.
The DOJ opinion, authored by Assistant Attorney General Christopher H. Schroeder, argues the law applies only to “unlawful” abortions. Those sending or delivering pills “typically will lack complete knowledge of how the recipients intend to use them and whether that use is unlawful under relevant law.”
Abortion is allowed by federal law, Schroeder wrote, and every state allows abortion in some circumstances, such as to preserve the life of a pregnant woman.
Individuals receiving abortion pills have “a constitutional right to travel to another state that has not prohibited that activity and to ingest the drugs there,” the opinion reads—so “someone sending a woman these drugs is unlikely to know where she will use them, which might be in a state in which such use is lawful.”
The opinion concludes, “therefore, even when a sender or deliverer of mifepristone or misoprostol, including USPS, knows that a package contains such drugs—or indeed that they will be used to facilitate an abortion—such knowledge alone is not a sufficient basis for concluding that [the law] has been violated.”
The decision applies to USPS and other carriers, such as United Parcel Service and FedEx.
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Are Republicans Afraid of Young Voters? [[link removed]] Plan B Does Not Cause Abortion, Says FDA [[link removed]]
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Landmark Global Biodiversity Agreement Enshrines Rights of Indigenous Peoples—Providing Hope for Bolivia’s Guarani [[link removed]] New U.S. Global Gender-Based Violence Strategy Says All The Right Things—But Action Is Next [[link removed]]
What we're reading
Because it's hard to keep up with everything going on in the world right now. Here's what we're reading this week:
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"The
House
of
Representatives
will
have
more
guys
named
'Mike'
than
women
chairing
committees
under
the
new
Republican
majority”
—
Insider
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[link removed] [[link removed]] Tune in for a new episode of Ms. magazine's podcast, On the Issues with Michele Goodwin on Apple Podcasts [[link removed]] + Spotify [[link removed]] .
Before Roe v. Wade , if you were in need of an abortion in Chicago, there was a number you could call, run by young women who called themselves Jane. They’d provide abortions to women who had nowhere else to turn. It was started by Heather Booth when she was 19 years old. In this episode, Booth joins Dr. Goodwin to discuss the history of the Jane Collective and the connections between our pre-Roe past and post-Roe future. Where do we go from here?
We hope you'll listen, subscribe, rate and review today!
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