WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 18: Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol January 18, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Colorado delegation called on Congress to take action to support communities in Colorado who are receiving migrants. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Jul 11, 2025, 7:55 AM ET

Lawmakers again attempt to repeal the Comstock Act, which outlaws mail-order abortion drugs

Abortion Pill·By Nancy Flanders

U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and others are calling for the repeal of the Comstock Act, a federal law that prohibits the mailing of “any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing [that] may, or can be used or applied for producing abortion” through the mail.

Key Takeaways:

Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper, from Colorado, is a sponsor of the Stop Comstock Act.
The Comstock Act of 1873 prohibits the mailing of anything through the mail that would be used to commit an abortion.
The ‘no-test’ abortion pill protocol puts women’s health and lives at risk.

What’s Happening:

Senator Hickenlooper is a sponsor of the Stop Comstock Act, a legislative effort to repeal the Comstock Act of 1873. Efforts to repeal Comstock have been attempted in previous years as well.

The Comstock Act prohibits the mailing of “abortifacient matter through express companies, common carrier, or interactive computer services.” As previously reported by Live Action News, those in charge of enforcing the law at the United States Postal Service (USPS) might be deliberately ignoring it, allowing illegal abortion pill syndicates to inundate the U.S. with abortion drugs.

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The abortion pill has become the primary means of aborting children in the U.S.; it allows abortionists to make money from selling abortions without actually committing the procedure themselves. Instead, the responsibility is offloaded to women who take the drug regimen and endure the painful process somewhere other than a medical facility. Should women experience complications (and many do), it is emergency room physicians and urgent care staff who are left to deal with the complications instead of the prescriber — and they may not be aware they’re treating complications resulting from the abortion pill.

Melisa Hidalgo-Cuellar, the chair of the Cobalt Abortion Fund, said she has seen a nearly 1,200% increase in funding for women accessing abortion through telehealth-only abortion businesses.

The Comstock Act, if actually enforced, would help prevent the abortion industry from mailing a pill and then washing their hands of any adverse events that result.

But Hickenlooper wants to ensure Comstock is erased from the books for good.

Why it Matters:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, President Biden’s FDA weakened safety regulations on the abortion pill, allowing it to be permanently sent to women by mail — despite the fact that in 2016, the Obama administration had removed the requirement for the reporting of any adverse events from the drug other than death. Biden’s FDA also allowed retail pharmacies to begin dispensing the drug.

In addition, the abortion industry has been encouraging women for over a decade to lie when presenting to the ER with complications resulting from the abortion pill, telling them they should say they’re having a natural miscarriage. The end result is that the abortion pill, despite its risks, is still labeled as “safe” because the abortion industry encouraged women to lie — not because women were in any legal danger, but to ensure that the truth would never be fully known, allowing the industry to continue misleading the public.

Women and preborn children have been paying the price of mail-order abortion. Babies are being flushed down toilets and tossed in dumpsters more than ever thanks to the proliferation of mail-order, DIY, no-test abortion pill use.

In addition, a recent analysis of insurance data reported that 11% of women who take the abortion pill will experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other serious or life-threatening complications. That’s one in 10 women experiencing at least one serious complication from taking mifepristone within 45 days — 22 times higher than the FDA reports on the mifepristone label.

Failing to carry out ultrasounds and other standard testing on pregnant women before selling them the abortion pill, which is then sent to them through the mail, downplays the seriousness of the abortion pill and puts women and preborn children at greater risk.

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The Backstory:

The abortion pill (mifepristone) was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the “termination of pregnancy” in 2000 under the Clinton administration and during the reign of Roe v. Wade. As explained by Live Action Research Fellow Carole Novielli, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, allowing states to create their own laws on abortion, the stage was set to enforce the Comstock Act. Instead, abortion by mail — under a “no-test” protocol, without blood tests for Rh factor, or ultrasounds to determine gestational age or rule out ectopic pregnancy — is becoming the new norm.

Live Action News has tracked the increase of illegal abortion pill syndicates in the U.S., warning in 2023 that illegal abortion pill ‘shadow networks‘ were using vacant homes as fake addresses and an ‘underground’ abortion market was developing.

In addition, in August of 2023, Live Action News documented an unregulated abortion pipeline, whose operators were storing abortion pills on a “ping-pong table” and shipping drugs from a makeshift home office in someone’s basement.

Go Deeper:

For more information on the Comstock Act, its history, and importance, read below:

Federal law prohibits sending abortion drugs by US mail… so why isn’t it being enforced?

‘Every rebellion starts with hope’: Pro-life ‘crusaders’ use existing law with goal of ending abortion

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