Conservatives know this will be deeply unpopular, which is why they often talk about Comstock by his criminal code number rather than his common name. (“I think pro-life groups should keep as quiet as possible until the election,” Mitchell said.) In contrast, Democrats should do everything they can to make “Comstock” a household name. That’s why they should support the bill to overhaul the Comstock Act, introduced Thursday by Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota. And that’s why President Biden would be wise to act on a petition filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to posthumously pardon one of Comstock’s prominent victims.
Many were shocked when the Supreme Court overturned Roe two years ago, but as Smith, the former vice president of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, told me, there was no need to be a shock, because the right has not hidden its aims. Something similar is happening with Comstock. “Believe them when they tell you what they want to do, because if they have the chance, they’ll do it,” she said.
But getting people to believe it won’t be easy. A significant number of swing state voters don’t even understand Trump’s role in the downfall of Roe. 17% of them blame Biden because the ruling was made during Biden’s presidency, according to a New York Times poll published last month. In Rolling Stone, Anat Shenker-Osorio, senior adviser to the Collaborative for Progressive Research, writes that in surveys and focus groups, disgruntled Democrats and swing state voters are appalled to learn of Project 2025’s policies, including the abortion issue. But only 21% of them think Republicans would actually implement them if they were to regain power. And they wonder, if the dangers of Project 2025’s policies are so serious, “why aren’t Democrats speaking out about them or fighting back?”
Messaging bills like Smith’s “Stop Comstock” bill won’t be enough to remind voters of what’s in store for us if Trump is reelected and his emboldened Christian nationalist allies take power. But they could be part of a campaign to communicate the stakes. Smith knows the bill won’t muster the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster — this is the Senate, after all, and all but two Republicans voted against a contraception rights bill this month — but he says the bill is “a very clear organizational tool to signal to people, including residents of my state, Nevada and others, that even if their reproductive rights are currently protected by state law, a future Trump administration could “sweep them away.”
The Stop Comstock Act may never reach Biden’s desk, but there is one thing he could do at this moment to strike a public blow against zombie laws: pardon D.M. Bennett, a freethinking publisher and one of Comstock’s sworn enemies. Bennett was sentenced to 13 months of hard labor in 1879 for mailing an anti-marriage pamphlet called “Cupid’s Yoke.” “By granting this pardon, the President will help right the injustice caused by D.M. Bennett’s wrongful prosecution and conviction, and will send an important message that Victorian-era laws should not be reinstated to undermine Americans’ individual rights,” wrote Robert Cornrevere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education, which filed the petition with the Biden administration.
