In early March , shortly after his namesake censorship bill was signed into federal law, Anthony Comstock was commissioned a special agent of the U. Post Office. Once Comstock was empowered to enforce his vision, it became illegal to mail any information or product relating to sex including sex education , birth control or abortion. The Comstock Act was deployed against art, literature and private correspondence, as well as pornography and abortionists. Still, as they have in every era of human society, those trades continued, forced into the realm of criminality and taboo.
In Texas, House Bill , known as "The Women and Child Safety Act," is a multi-pronged proposal that would not only ban the manufacture and distribution of abortion drugs and criminalize the actions of abortion funds, but would censor online information about abortion.
It aims to suppress speech on the Internet. In January, the Texas bill saw a real-world rehearsal when Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, blocked or blurred access to accounts run by abortion pill providers across its platforms. Meanwhile, on the federal level, Project , the page blueprint produced by the Heritage Foundation and designed to set priorities for this administration, explicitly states the Comstock Act should be revived and enforced.
Connecticut, the case that legalized access to contraception for married couples, and, eight years later, Roe v. Wade, which allowed abortion. Need a break? Historical abortion rates are difficult to determine with much accuracy, but one certainty is that economic recessions correlate with higher abortion rates.
The Kinsey Institute found that upper- and middle-class women terminated Among working-class women, the rate was lower β Doctors were expensive and hard to find, and women resorted to pencils, nails, hatpins, drinking turpentine and throwing themselves down stairs, among other methods. An estimated 2, women died in alone as a result. In a bid to avoid the harsh penalties written into the law, the market for fertility control turned to euphemisms. Arguments based on eugenics, economics and free speech fared better, politically.
