[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 133 (Tuesday, September 24, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H10769-H10770]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    COMSTOCK ACT STILL ON THE BOOKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Madam Speaker, I take this 5 minutes to talk about 
something I hoped we would have been able to correct on corrections 
day, but we have not quite gotten to it yet. Maybe there is still time.
  There was in the past century a man named Mr. Comstock, and Mr. 
Comstock was one of these people who decided only he knew what was 
virtuous and right, and somehow he managed to convince all sorts of 
people that this was correct. He even in 1873 was able to get on the 
floor of this House, if you can imagine such a thing, and he stayed 
here all day long while the Congress was in session. He ran around with 
a satchel full of books and pictures, and he buttonholed every Member 
he could find saying, ``Look at this, look at this.'' He wanted a bill 
passed, which the Congress then passed unanimously, and they named it 
the Comstock Act after him because he had pushed so very hard for it.
  Madam Speaker, what this bill did was allow almost him, himself, to 
define what would be lewd, what would be filthy, or what would be 
things that should be banned. He was particularly upset about anything 
dealing with family planning and also any kind of abortion or 
contraceptive information.
  So, with virtually the entire Congress intimidated, they let this act 
go through, and, as a consequence, this man went on to really terrorize 
America, because shortly thereafter, it was not bad enough that the 
Congress passed this bill, but they then commissioned him as a special 
agent of the Post Office and vested him with the powers of arrest and 
the privilege of free transportation so that he could go around and 
enforce this law unilaterally. He want on to brag later on that he had 
been responsible for enough criminal convictions of people to fill a 
61-coach passenger train. That is really fairly amazing.
  And some of the people that he went after were particularly women. He 
went after Victoria Woodhull, who had tried to run for President even 
though women could not vote in the 19th century. He went after her on 
counts of obscenity and every other such thing. He was absolutely 
obsessed with Margaret Sanger and her husband. He arraigned Margaret 
Sanger on eight counts of obscenity, and then he went after Margaret 
Sanger's husband for the same thing.
  This is really all very serious because Americans were living with 
censorship of their mail, druggists lived in constant fear of being 
prosecuted by this man or people enforcing this law, having anything 
that looked like a contraceptive, publishers were terrified and had to 
change an awful lot of the text book and scientific information 
because, again, this could happen, and George Bernard Shaw said from 
across the ocean, as he looked at this: ``Comstockery is the world's 
standing joke at the expense of the United States. It confirms the 
deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America really is a 
provincial place, and second-rate civilization after all.'' So, even 
George Bernard Shaw was watching all of this.
  These were serious fines, too. They are now up to $5,000 to $250,000 
for a first offense.

[[Page H10770]]

  Now all of this is historic, and you say, ``Why am I taking the 
time?'' The problem is, this body just allowed the Comstock Act to be 
enforced on the Internet vis-a-vis anything doing with abortion. 
Previously, the Congress did away the Comstock Act dealing with family 
planning, thank goodness. But the Comstock Act has never been repealed; 
it is still on the books. And so, as a consequence, this has been 
thrown up on the Internet and could be used to bring people into a 
criminal conviction or arraignment if they decided to discuss anything 
about the big A word on the Internet.
  Now I think when you look at this thing that I am sure more people 
started out thinking was a real anachronism from the 19th century, the 
fact that it is still on the books in the 20th century, and then to 
think that this Congress put it up on the Internet for the 21st century 
is really, really sad, and I would hope some time before this year is 
over we could go back and amend the Telecommunications Act, because at 
the time we are deregulating everything else, to think we are 
regulating speech about women and making it criminal I think is going 
the wrong way.
  Madam Speaker, I want to take a moment today to recall a shameful 
chapter in the history of our country and this Congress. I want to talk 
about Anthony Comstock and the events historians now refer to as 
``Comstockery,'' because I think we have to acknowledge that elements 
of Comstockery are all too present today.
  Anthony Comstock was a religious fanatic who spent his life in a 
personal crusade for moral purity--as defined, of course, by himself. 
This crusade resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of a multitude of 
Americans whose only crime was to exercise their constitutional right 
of free speech in ways that offended Anthony Comstock. Women seemed to 
particularly offend Anthony Comstock, most particularly women who 
believed in the right to plan their families through the use of 
contraceptives, or in the right of women to engage in discussions and 
debate about matters involving sexuality, including contraception and 
abortion.
  For example, on November 3, 1872, Mr. Comstock brought about the 
arrest, on charges of obscenity, of two feminists, Victoria Woodhull 
and Tennessee Claflin, because they published a story in their 
newspaper about the alleged infidelity of Henry Ward Beecher, a 
clergyman. Comstock went after Margaret Sanger in 1914, causing her 
arraignment on eight counts of obscenity for publishing newspaper 
articles on birth control. He obtained a conviction against Margaret 
Sanger's husband, William Sanger, in 1915 for selling a single copy of 
a pamphlet on birth control entitled ``Family Limitation.''
  Anthony Comstock, of course, could not conduct his fanatic crusade 
singlehandedly. His crusade was empowered by the Congress of the United 
States, which allowed him onto the floor of the House in January 1873, 
where he remained nearly all day. Carrying a satchel full of books and 
pictures he claimed were pornographic, he showed them to every Member 
of Congress he could buttonhole, and lobbied for a bill that would give 
him the legal authority to carry on his campaign of persecution and 
censorship in the name of fighting obscenity. One biographer notes that 
tears flowed from his eyes as he addressed Congress, begging for a law 
to stop the ``hydra-headed monster'' of vice.
  The Congress, unfortunately, soon obliged Mr. Comstock, passing what 
is known as the Comstock Act. This act makes it a crime to advertise or 
mail not only ``every lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, 
picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an 
indecent character,'' but also any information ``for preventing 
contraception or producing abortion.'' Congress passed this law with 
virtually no discussion, acting by unanimous consent in the Senate and 
under suspension of the rules in the House.
  The Committee on Appropriations then set aside several thousand 
dollars for a special agent to carry out the Comstock Act, and on March 
6, 1873, 1 day before his 29th birthday, Anthony Comstock was 
commissioned as a special agent of the post office, vested with powers 
of arrest and the privilege of free transportation on all mail lines so 
that he could roam the country arresting and prosecuting those who 
dared to send through the mails any information about contraception or 
abortion, or anything that Comstock deemed to be lewd or indecent.
  As a result of Comstock's crusade, publishers were forced to censor 
their scientific and physiological works, druggists were punished for 
giving out information about contraception, and average Americans had 
to live with censorship of their mail, and without access to reliable 
information about contraception. Two years before this death in 1915, 
Comstock bragged that he had been responsible for the criminal 
conviction of enough people to fill a 61-coach passenger train.
  George Bernard Shaw assessed this terrible series of events in 1905, 
saying, Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the 
United States. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World 
that America is a provincial place, a second-rate civilization after 
all.
  Although its reach has been somewhat curtailed by the courts based 
upon first amendment principles, the Comstock Act remains on our books 
today. In 1971, Congress deleted the prohibition on birth control; but 
the prohibition on information about abortion remains, and the maximum 
fine was increased in 1994 from $5,000 to $250,000 for a first offense.
  Comstockery, unfortunately, is not just a shameful part of our past. 
Comstockery has been given a new lease on life by this Congress.
  The Telecommunications Act passed this year extended the Comstock 
Act's prohibitions to anyone who uses an interactive computer service. 
This Congress, therefore, revived Comstockery by making it a crime to 
use the Internet to provide or receive information which directly or 
indirectly tells where, how, of whom, or by what means an abortion may 
be obtained. A broader gag rule is hard to imagine. It could 
criminalize:
  An Internet posting of the referral directory of your local medical 
society, or the yellow pages of the telephone directory;
  A telemedicine consultation between two doctors who are conferring 
about a patient who may need an abortion to save her life; or
  Uploading or downloading medical journal articles about RU-486, or 
about safe abortion techniques.
  I have introduced legislation to repeal the abortion-related speech 
provisions of the Comstock Act, but unfortunately, the leadership of 
the Judiciary Committee and of the Congress has refused to move this 
bill. So Comstockery remains alive and well, and until the Congress is 
motivated to renounce Comstockery once and for all, I fear that women 
will pay a disproportionate share of the price, with the dark shadow of 
Anthony Comstock hanging over our health-related speech on critical 
topics such as abortion.
  And Comstockery seems to be enjoying a revival in other ways, as 
well. Efforts to impose gag rules on doctors, punitive measures 
designed to make it harder for women to get access to information and 
services relating to contraception and abortion, laws that would allow 
the Anthony Comstocks of today to arrest and jail doctors who perform 
an abortion procedure that in their medical judgment is the safest to 
preserve the health and future fertility of their patients--all this is 
the Comstockery of today.
  It is only President Clinton's veto of H.R. 1833 that stops us from 
seeing, on the evening news, the chilling image of medical doctors 
going in handcuffs to criminal trial for exercising their best medical 
judgment for women who wanted pregnancies have gone terribly wrong.
  Republican control of the Congress has brought us more than 50 votes 
on abortion. Every imaginable form of Comstockery is represented in 
this array of antichoice measures.
  Anthony Comstock's crusade against free speech and reproductive 
choice represents one of the worst chapters of our history. The last 
thing this country needs or wants is a bridge to the past represented 
by Comstockery. Suppression of free speech, suppression of reproductive 
choice, is an aberration from genuine American values.
  As the Anthony Comstocks of today patrol the Halls of this Congress 
seeking to suppress free speech and reproductive choice in the name of 
morality, or family values, or whatever high-sounding purpose they may 
invoke, it is incumbent upon the Congress to ensure that no form of the 
Comstock Act is ever again enacted, and that no special agent is ever 
again commissioned to roam the land, persecuting Americans in the name 
of morality or family values.

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