U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) has joined with Senate Democrats to introduce the Stop Comstock Act to protect access to medication abortions like Mifepristone.
The legislation would repeal the Comstock Act of 1873, which anti-abortion activists have threatened to invoke to effectively end access to medication abortion without a single act of Congress. The bill would repeal language in the Comstock lawl that could be used to ban the mailing of mifepristone and other drugs used in medication abortions, instruments and equipment used in abortions, and educational material related to sexual health.
“Extreme Republicans and dust-covered laws from 1873 have no business dictating a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions,” said Hickenlooper in a news release. “We’re fighting to take those arcane laws off the books and protect reproductive health care nationwide.”
In Colorado, anti-abortion activists and members of the Pueblo City Council have made two attempts at a municipal abortion ban, citing the Comstock Act. The initial efforts to ban abortion in Pueblo were inspired by Mark Lee Dickson, the director of Right to Life of East Texas and founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative, and lawyers Josh Craddock and Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general and one of the authors of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
“From my standpoint, I want to get Comstock to the Supreme Court as quickly as possible,” Mitchell told The Nation in 2023.
While their efforts failed in Pueblo, Dickson and Mitchell have had success using the law to ban abortion at the municipal and county level in Texas and New Mexico.
Medication abortion isn’t just under attack from legal activists. Anti-abortion groups across the nation are using a new report from the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) in discussions around medication abortion.
“I take a couple of medications every day that I’m going to get the privilege to take for the rest of my life,” said Life Network President and CEO Rich Bennet, during a recent appearance on Crosswalk, a podcast hosted by Colorado Springs pastor and U.S. Rep. Jeff Crank’s (R-CO) faith advisor, Jeff Anderson. “If suddenly I woke up and I found out that the medication I had been taking was 22 times more dangerous than I thought that would get my attention, well, that’s exactly what has happened with mifepristone, which is the first pill in that abortion pill protocol. It’s gonna be really interesting to see if the FDA pays attention to what is far and away the biggest study that has ever happened on the abortion pill.”
Pro-abortion advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood and others have noted that the paper was released directly by the conservative think tank and not published in a medical journal where it would have been vetted by outside experts in the peer review process.
According to recent reporting from Politico, “Brittni Frederiksen, the associate director for Women’s Health Policy at the nonpartisan health care think tank KFF, is among those skeptical of the groups’ findings. She highlighted, for instance, that the report lists ectopic pregnancies — when an embryo implants outside the uterus — as an ‘adverse event’ from the pills when the pills do not cause ectopic pregnancies. Rather, according to the FDA, ectopic pregnancies are a contraindication, meaning patients are told not to take the pills in that instance because they will not work. Also, a large percentage of the harms listed in the EPPC report are patients who needed a follow-up surgical abortion because the pills did not end their pregnancies — which she and other experts argue is a known potential outcome disclosed on the medication’s label and not an ‘adverse event.’”
Hickenlooper’s Stop Comstock Act has been endorsed by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Reproductive Rights, National Women’s Law Center, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America), Take Back the Court Action Fund, Healthcare Across Borders, Expanding Medication Abortion Access (EMAA).
