Abortion Policy • Courts • Government + Politics • Health

How a 19th century law, central to a national telehealth abortion case, could impact Virginia

Should justices uphold it, the federal law could weaken parts of Virginia’s pending constitutional amendment to protect reproductive rights.

By: Charlotte Rene Woods - May 16, 2026 5:24 am

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Several boxes of mifepristone, a medication used to induce abortions and expel the remains of miscarriages. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court temporarily preserved telehealth access to the abortion drug mifepristone Thursday until an appeals court can rule on a legal challenge to the medication the state of Louisiana filed against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. ... The result could have national implications by outlawing the mailing of mifepristone — even in states without abortion bans, like Virginia.

While the Supreme Court has allowed mifepristone to continue to be mailed for now, one of the dissenting justices, Clarence Thomas, cited a long-dormant 1873 law that blocks mailing “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use.”

Abortion opponents have long considered that law, dubbed the Comstock Act, as a possible vehicle to enact a national ban of the procedure. One of them, activist Mark Lee Dickson, has traveled the country to persuade local governments to pass ordinances to apply defunct law.

“If enforced, it would have the same impact as a national ban on abortion,” he said in 2024. “That is because it is a de-factor national abortion ban.”

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