Listen up, ladies. Did you think your reproductive destiny was yours to decide? Think again, because it looks like we’re going to be refighting the battle of 1873. That was the year Congress passed the Comstock Act. Comstockery, as playwright George Bernard Shaw called it during his own censorship kerfuffle, is having a nationwide rerun.
The pin-up for this new/old world is Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Next time you see Mr. Santorum holding forth on the dangers of contraception, take a closer look and you might catch a glimpse of Anthony Comstock’s shadow snuggled on Rick’s sweater-vested shoulders.
Even though Santorum’s moment in the media glare has made him the point person for an increasingly ugly debate over women’s reproductive rights, don’t be fooled. He’s not alone. There’s a phalanx of foot soldiers who share his opinions, and their ranks are swelling with socially conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers, Evangelicals, anti-choice activists, and Republican state legislators and governors who are bending themselves out of shape to force restrictions on your reproductive choices.
The Comstock century
Although hardly a household word today, Comstock’s name left a legislative legacy that has endured for more than a century and continues to this day to hover over our national debate on women’s rights.
Anthony Comstock was a New Yorker who served in the Union army during the Civil War. During his stint in the infantry, Comstock—a religious zealot who, like Santorum, believed in a strict theological worldview—was appalled by photos of ladies posing in various states of undress that his fellow soldiers tucked away in the pockets of their uniforms. When the conflict ended, Comstock returned to New York City, where he found streets “polluted” with prostitution and pornography—fodder for his anti-obscenity crusade that led to the founding of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
Comstock’s success in the big city emboldened him to take his crusade nationwide. Armed with legislation he had personally penned, Comstock traveled to the halls of Congress. With no floor debate, in 1873 the Comstock Act was passed and signed by President Grant.
The Comstock Act suppressed the sale and circulation through the mail of “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” books, pamphlets, pictures, papers or other publications of an indecent character, as well as articles of “immoral use.” Contraceptives and abortion were classified as obscene, thereby criminalizing them as well.
The broadness of the legislation’s language ensnared doctors, teachers, scientists, and pharmacists who risked prosecution not only for disseminating information on contraception and abortion but also on reproduction, anatomy, and the causes and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Even medical textbooks expunged any references to contraception or abortion. This censorship of reliable information occurred at a time when various contraceptive methods (some effective, some not) were widely used, and physicians reported one intentional abortion for every five live births.
The Comstock Act just won’t go away
Over the years, challenges to the act have nibbled away at many of its provisions. However, the act—although in a modified form—is still on the books today.
1878, 1918, 1923, 1930, 1938, 1971, and 1983. Those were years in which individuals who understood the fundamental health necessity of reproductive choice struggled to have portions of the Comstock Act repealed or overturned. Many faced opposition from the Catholic Church and failed.
Margaret Sanger, founder of the first birth-control clinics in the United States, successfully challenged the act in court and succeeded in striking down provisions on two fronts: first, allowing women to use birth control for therapeutic purposes and then, finally, overturning entirely the federal ban on birth control.
Incredibly, it was not until 1983 that the prohibition on mailing advertisements for contraceptives was struck from the law, and the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the ban on mailing of unsolicited contraceptive advertisements.
Still on the books today, however, are Comstock Act restrictions on dissemination of abortion-related information. As recently as 1994, Congress increased the maximum fine for a first-time violation of the act from $5,000 to $250,000.
Kindred spirits
If Comstock were alive today, we’d probably recognize him as a master framer of the specious link between contraception and promiscuity. This is where Santorum and others who share his beliefs connect most directly to the nineteenth-century spirit of Comstockery–the idea that simply the availability of contraception promotes lust and lewdness. Like Comstock, those who would limit reproductive choice believe that limiting access will control and suppress sexual behavior.
Santorum summed up this worldview when he declared, “Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that’s okay, contraception is okay. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” Linking birth control and sexual behavior in one foul-mouthed tirade is what dumped Rush Limbaugh into hot water when he slandered Sandra Fluk by labeling her advocacy of no-cost contraception as a view that could only be espoused by a slut or a prostitute.
Comstockery makes a comeback in state legislatures
Even if Santorum is not the eventual Republican nominee, his fellow believers in state legislatures are playing fast and loose with women’s rights. In 2011, more than 1,100 reproductive health and rights provisions were introduced in fifty states, with 135 being successfully enacted in 36 states. Ninety-two out of the 135 restrict access to abortion services. Other provisions include personhood bills, waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, restrictions on insurance coverage for abortions and birth control, clinic regulation, and expansion of abstinence-only education.
The backlash to this assault on women’s rights has just begun. And the upcoming election is going to be a test of the strength of our commitment to defend the right of women to make their own choices about their bodies and their lives. The question is: will we finally be able to honestly say, “Anthony Comstock, R.I.P.”