In the 19the century, Anthony Comstock, on a crusade against sexual freedom, was mocked for his prudishness. Still, he wielded real power. In 1873, he persuaded Congress to pass the Comstock Act, which he wrote. This sanctions at the federal level the sending or delivery by mail, or any other means of delivery, of material “obscene or lascivious”, and in particular articles used for abortion or birth control.
By the 1960s, the Comstock Act had already fallen into disuse. With the Roe judgment vs Wade, rendered by the Supreme Court in 1973, which had legalized the right to abortion nationwide, the Comstock Act had even become unconstitutional. However, it remained in the Penal Code.
A strange resurrection
And today [suite à l’invalidation, le 24 juin 2022, par la Cour suprême de l’arrêt Roe vs Wade], she is making a comeback. Once again, the Conservatives are brandishing it to attack freedoms. They are now referring to it in an attempt to ban the shipment of abortion pills, forcing judges and the Biden administration to reopen a debate that seemed long over.
The resurrection of the Comstock law is part of a larger phenomenon: opponents of abortion have embarked on a major legal battle aimed at banning the distribution and marketing of abortion pills. At the center of this fight, a group of anti-abortion organizations and Texas doctors who are engaged in a lawsuit that has already made a brief passage in the Supreme Court and is now before a federal appeals court.
Their goal: to force the Food and Drug Administration [FDA, l’agence américaine du médicament] to revoke the marketing authorization for mifepristone, one of the two pills to be taken for real
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The New York Times (New York)
With 1,600 journalists, 35 overseas bureaus, 130 Pulitzer Prize winners and some 5 million total subscribers, The New York Times is by far the leading daily newspaper in the country, in which one can read “all the news that’s fit to print” (“all information worthy of publication”).
It is the reference newspaper of the United States, insofar as the televisions consider that a subject deserves national coverage only if The New York Times Trafficking. Its Sunday edition (1.1 million copies) is distributed across the country – including The New York Times Book Review, an authoritative book supplement, and the unequaled New York Times Magazine. The Ochs-Sulzberger family, which in 1896 took control of this newspaper created in 1851, is still at the head of the centre-left daily.
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2023-05-24 03:00:25
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