We have nothing if we don’t have solidarity

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Religious leaders aren’t typically the heroes of abortion stories, but in 1967 a group of mostly Protestant ministers and Jewish rabbis formed the Clergymen’s Consultation Service on Abortion (CCS) to help people receive legal abortions in the days before Roe v. Wade. These remarkable clergymen “turned religious spaces into sanctuaries for abortion,” according to scholar Gillian Frank, and helped some 250,000 women safely access abortion care in the face of Catholic leaders’ demonization of the procedure. 

I had the opportunity to hear Frank present on Tuesday in Cambridge, Mass., at ComstockCon, a remarkable day-long conference about abortion held at Harvard Law School that brought together academics, activists and journalists to discuss the dire threats to abortion access. The event’s name references the Comstock Act of 1873, named for Anthony Comstock, a late 19th century United States Postal Inspector and anti-vice crusader hellbent on preventing anything he considered “obscene” to be sent via mail—including medication that could be used for an abortion. Subsequent Supreme Court decisions rendered it unenforceable with regard to abortifacients, basically making it a zombie law. 

The problem, however, with antiquated, draconian laws is that they are still laws. And that means if newer Supreme Court decisions can be applied, rules drawn up by long-dead politicians can still be used to enforce a modern-day agenda. That’s exactly what some Republicans have set out to do with Comstock since Roe was overturned in 2022. Soon, this zombie may rise. 

“Given that Comstock is still on the books, however, a future anti-abortion presidential administration could use it to effectively put an end to abortion and miscarriage management nationwide,” the nonprofit groups Healthcare Across Borders, Take Back the Court Action Fund, UltraViolet Action wrote in a memo to Congress on Tuesday, “because if abortion providers cannot use the mail or express services to obtain pills, equipment, and supplies, clinics and abortion provision would become practically impossible.”

The point of ComstockCon wasn’t to scare us into fighting for abortion rights, or even to formulate a plan to overturn the Comstock Act (though the wheels are already in motion for that.) What emerged from the day was further confirmation that abortion does not exist in a vacuum, because no struggle does. Multiple speakers referenced the protests against genocide in Gaza and Harvard’s student encampment a few minutes away; anti-blackness and racism undergirded every panel; and numerous links were made to trans liberation and health care. And by the end of the day, one thing was clear: The most powerful tool for protecting and expanding abortion rights—and all human rights—is through solidarity.