First, as summarized in points 1, 2, and 3 above, this section outright criminalizes activities related to the mailing of three categories of objects and to this extent has been upheld as constitutionally valid by the Supreme Court.

[14] Third, laws prohibiting conveyance of material providing information on the procurement of legal abortion were ruled unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds in Bigelow v. Virginia (1975).

Second, a person must knowingly commit any of the specified acts (which in this section is either import, carriage in interstate or foreign commerce, or receipt of the specified material) and implicate in connection either the U.S. mail, a common carrier, or an interactive computer service.

It presently provides that: All persons are prohibited from importing into the United States from any foreign country any book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, or drawing containing any matter advocating or urging treason or insurrection against the United States, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States, or containing any threat to take the life of or inflict bodily harm upon any person in the United States, or any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast, instrument, or other article which is obscene or immoral, or any drug or medicine or any article whatever for causing unlawful abortion, or any lottery ticket, or any printed paper that may be used as a lottery ticket, or any advertisement of any lottery...This provision has two basic aspects.

For purposes of the Comstock Act, the term indecent is defined in the text as including "matter of a character tending to incite arson, murder, or assassination".

[35][36] In June 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a 5–4 majority opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022).

Mifepristone is approved (under the brand name Mifeprex), in a regimen with misoprostol (a prostaglandin analogue), for ending of a pregnancy up to 70 days post gestation.

[41] In March 2023, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, an anti-abortion group founded in 2022, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the FDA's approval of mifepristone from back in the year 2000.

While primarily pertaining to a facial challenge mounted against a federal law barring the mailing of lottery items, the Court nonetheless made reference to the Comstock Act.

[28][56] The opinion in Thirty-Seven Photographs was handed down two years prior to Miller v. California (1973) and additionally interpreted a 14-day time limit into beginning forfeitures under Sec.

As an example, in Roth v. United States (1957), a case partially superseded by Miller v. California (1973) as to the particular test used, the Supreme Court upheld the Comstock Act against a First Amendment challenge.

[50][52] In One, Inc. v. Olesen (1958), decided as a follow-on to Roth, the Supreme Court ruled that material pertaining to homosexuality is not ipso facto obscene[61][62] and later reaffirming the conclusion in MANual Enterprises v. Day (1962).

[79] The law has had some prosecutions in recent years, though enforcement of the Act's provisions has shifted from obscenity generally to primarily being a tool in securing child pornography convictions.

§ 1462, was that of Thomas Alan Arthur, a Texas man who was sentenced in 2021 to 40 years in federal prison for his role as the operator of an internet site which acted as a paid repository of obscene writings and drawings pertaining to child sexual abuse.

[4] Following the outcome reached in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), the Comstock Act has become increasingly discussed by anti-abortion groups and public figures as being a means by which abortion access in the United States could be curtailed without the need for new federal legislation.

"[90] Ed Whelan, another attorney active in the anti-abortion movement and the former president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank, expressed a view similar to that of Mitchell and criticized Biden administration policy towards abortion, claiming that "[b]y hook or by crook, the Biden administration is determined to undermine or circumvent state laws restricting abortion".

[44][94] On February 2, 2023, twenty Republican State attorneys general issued a letter to CVS and Walgreens against the mailing of mifepristone and misoprostol in combination, citing the Comstock Act.

In 1997, Representative Barney Frank introduced the Comstock Cleanup Act in an effort to achieve this same goal, but his bill failed (not even making it to committee).

[102] This combination regimen has increasingly been prescribed through telehealth and delivered by mail to individuals within states where abortion has since been broadly restricted following the Dobbs decision.

[108] According to psychologist Paul R. Abramson, the widespread availability of pornography during the American Civil War (1861–1865) gave rise to an anti-pornography movement, culminating in the passage of the Comstock Act in 1873,[109] but which also dealt with birth control and abortion issues.

Afterwards, Anthony Comstock worked to introduce a stand-alone bill, the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, with more comprehensive provisions.

Finally, the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 3, 1873.

All of this data was used to support the belief held by the Association's leadership that many of its younger and less supervised members had ample time in the evenings to leisure about in bars, casinos, and brothels.

This 1868 law enabled local magistrate judges to issue warrants allowing police to seize and later destroy (upon a guilty verdict) materials ruled "obscene".

[114] Other works that he tried to enclose under the range of the laws that used his namesake include international art pieces that depicted scantily-clad women, textbooks for medical students, and other sexually non-explicit items.

[107] Father Coughlin, a Catholic priest and radio broadcaster, argued in support of the Act before a 1934 congressional committee, characterizing non-procreative sex as "legalized prostitution".

[107]: 63–65  Although the petition received positive press coverage, the efforts were stymied when Anthony Comstock showed samples of pornographic material to congressional leaders serving on the same committee for which the proposed repeal act was referred.

Comstock claimed that the pamphlets he had shared, a "collection of smutty circulars describing sex depravity",[107]: 65  had been distributed by mail to youths and other persons.

[107]: 65 After the 19th century failures, there was no concerted effort to change Comstock-style laws until the start of the birth control movement in the United States in 1914, led by Margaret Sanger.

[116] Comstock actively targeted individuals associated with the Free Love Movement, particularly those advocating for birth control and against traditional marriage.