March 3, 1873: Comstock Act Enacted

Seal of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded in 1873. Source: Public domain

Passed by Congress on March 3, 1873, the Comstock Act made it a federal crime to disseminate birth control across state lines or through the mail. This anti-obscenity law was written by Anthony Comstock, a Christian and Civil War veteran who lived in New York, where he served as secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.

As described in the PBS article Anthony Comstock’s “Chastity” Laws,

In the late 1860s, Comstock began supplying the police with information for raids on sex trade merchants and came to prominence with his anti-obscenity crusade. Also offended by explicit advertisements for birth control devices, he soon identified the contraceptive industry as one of his targets. Comstock was certain that the availability of contraceptives alone promoted lust and lewdness.

“Anthony Comstock Shuddering at the Sight of an Unshelled Peanut,” by Godfrey, Rogue magazine, July 1915. Source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library / Science History Institute Museum & Library

In the The Moral Crusade episode of the Empire City podcast, Chenjerai Kumanyika explains,

Officers in early New York didn’t just police the city’s vice economy; they profited from it. But when America’s first professional vice fighter Anthony Comstock strong-arms the NYPD into enforcing his vision of morality, he also transformed how and what we police. . . .

The Comstock Act defines obscenity so broadly that it can be used to go after not just people making pornography, but sex workers, brothel owners, activists, journalists and writers.

Soon after the Comstock Act became law, nearly half the the states in the country enacted similar anti-obscenity laws, and in Connecticut the use of birth control itself became illegal.

These laws remained for nearly 50 years, until birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger was arrested in 1916 for opening the country’s first birth control clinic. The Comstock Act was amended in 1936 when it became legal to distribute birth control across state lines. It wasn’t until the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973 — 100 years after the Comstock Act was first passed — that a woman’s right to abortion was constitutionally protected (and this, of course, was overturned in the 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision).