As rules allowing the distribution of the abortion drug mifepristone move rapidly toward the Supreme Court, the anti-abortion movement is turning a Victorian era anti-vice law designed to control public morality through the policing of mail.

In their decisions restricting the distribution of mifepristone, District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk , a Donald Trump appointee, and two other Trump-appointed judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals adopted interpretations of the 1873 Comstock Act that could lead to a total nationwide ban on abortion .

Enacted at the height of the Victorian Era, the federal Comstock Act and state-level copies authorized the Postal Service to search the mail for anything that could corrupt public morals. The banned materials ranged from pornographic pictures and drawings, literature deemed obscene, informational documents explaining sex, sexuality, contraception and abortion, advertisements for contraception and abortion and any item that could be used for contraception or abortion.

The law was used to prosecute thousands of people and seize hundreds of thousands of mailed papers, pictures and objects, including more than 8,000 boxes of medication used for abortion from 1873 to 1907. The legal crackdown led by the laws namesake, postal inspector and moral crusader Anthony Comstock, faced strong opposition from a new wave of feminists and progressive and libertarian-minded activists. As public sentiment changed over the years, the law fell into disrepute, with its supporters mocked for practicing prudish Comstockery.

Its restrictions fell one by one in the middle of the 20th century following a series of court decisions endorsing free speech and legalizing contraception, in Griswold v. Connecticut, and then abortion, in Roe v. Wade, leaving it with little practical application outside of the distribution of child pornography.

But then five conservatives on the Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion granted in Roe in the 2022 case of Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization . While Congress had removed the section of the Comstock Act restricting the distribution of materials related to contraception following Griswold, it never removed the restrictions on abortion. Suddenly, the Comstock Act was back in play.