Anti-Abortion Groups Defend Century-Old Mailing Law in Pill Case

The anti-abortion movement is rallying behind the argument that a more than 150-year-old law prohibits the mailing of abortion pills—a question before the Supreme Court that reproductive health lawyers say threatens to restrict abortion access nationwide.

Physicians represented by the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom argue in their lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of the abortion medication mifepristone that the agency’s 2021 decision allowing individuals to get it through the mail violates an 1873 law known as the Comstock Act. This law, which has largely gone unenforced for decades, in part prohibits the mailing of ...