A leading pro-life group is pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act to halt the mailing of chemical abortion pills, saying it is essential to protect preborn babies, their mothers and the ability of states to safeguard innocent life.
Students for Life America sent a letter to Bondi urging the Department of Justice to investigate and stop those shipping abortion pills through the U.S. mail, both domestically and from foreign sources.
“Attorney General Bondi, we ask you to enforce the Comstock Act immediately and investigate violators of the prohibition to mail Chemical Abortion Pills, both in the U.S. and internationally,” Students for Life America President Kristan Hawkins wrote in the letter.
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The organization argued that enforcing the federal law is the right course following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
“Enforcing the Comstock Act is the right thing to do for preborn babies, for mothers, and for the environment. It shows respect for the law and the states,” the letter states. “The failure to do so makes all the wrong people happy — pill pushers and abusers — and we believe better of the Trump Administration. Please prioritize this vital effort today.”
The letter warns that failing to act allows “trafficking in Chemical Abortion Pills by national and international pill pushers who mock state laws to profit from death-by-abortion.”
“The Trump Administration does not turn a blind eye to violations of election or immigration law or to fraud in government programs. This must be no different,” the group wrote.
Hawkins told the Washington Examiner that allowing mail-order abortion pills undermines the idea that abortion is purely a state issue.
“Abortion cannot be a state issue if you continue to allow predatory abortion drug vendors who ship pills to any person, male or female, pregnant, non-pregnant, sex abuser, non-sex-abuser, across the country,” she said. “And circumvent the laws of free-to-be-born states. And this is a constitutional crisis, as far as I’m concerned.”
The letter also highlights environmental damage from chemical abortions.
“Another risk of neglecting enforcement is the reality of abortion water pollution,” the group wrote. “Using the abortion industry’s own math, each year, more than 50 tons of chemically tainted blood and placenta tissue, along with human remains, go into America’s waterways, with active metabolites that continue to have an impact.”
In February, 44 pro-life leaders filed a legal brief in the case Louisiana v. FDA, arguing that the agency’s changes allowing mail-order abortion drugs violate the Comstock Act’s prohibition on mailing items “intended for producing abortion” and undermine state pro-life laws.
Hawkins said pro-life advocates have expressed their concerns privately but are now going public.
“We’ve been doing the Christian thing of going to our friends in private; it’s now time to go to our friends in public,” she said.
Students for Life America said it will continue pressing the Department of Justice, including through planned grassroots action at the DOJ in May.
