bring anthony comstock back.et's have a public airing about his legacy because republicans understand they cannot ban abortion nationwide unless they're able to resuscitate this law from 1873. and that is what they are trying to do. democrats, if they needed a plan on abortion, i'm giving you a plan. try this, repeal the comstock act. that is the strategy for antiabortion activists within forward and these lawsuits are clear evidence of that. amy: there are republicans who also are pro-choice like cops never maze stop >> of course. and we need to hear from them and we need to hear -- have a full airing because abortion rights are popular. they popular across party lines. referendum after referendum has shown as wisconsin state supreme court election just showed is that. antiabortion strategists are trying to go through these back channels using conservative cords that have been stacked with trump appointees. the more we can talk about this in public, the better. amy: amy littlefield, abortion access correspondent

this country is going. >> that is such a good question because i think we do have to look at anthony comstockcifically as a person. it illustrates in many ways how one person can have a really outsized impact on our democracy. comstock served in the union army where he was scandalized by the amount of alcohol, pornography, you know, that his fellow soldiers were taking advantage of during the civil war. after the war, he went to new york where he aligned himself with the young men's christian association and he started a sort of offshoot called the new york society for the suppression of feiss. at that point, he was funded to go down to washington, d.c., and lobby congress for this obscenity law. he was obsessed with sex and he was able to get the senators and representatives at the time on board. it was one of the quickest laws that has ever been passed in american history. there was really no opposition to it. amy: i was just going to say, michelle gilbert writes in "the new york times" that notorious and types entity law used to indict the planned parenthood founder margaret sanger banned

anthony comstock you fought for the union and civil war but while doing so was so offended by the frequency with which his fello soldiers talked about sex that he just decided to dedicate th rest of his life to eradicatin what he called obscenity fro public life. he crusade against pornography sex toys, free love, birth control, and abortion. now, in terms of the motivatio in his diaries, he wrote a lot about his own weaknesses he seemed to describe himsel as a chronic master bader. so yeah. that is the guy who inspired these victorian era laws, whic a texas judge in 2023 wants to bring us back to just to be clear, not just 1973, 1873 in fact, here is that judge, i his own words, a talk show a decade ago where he sounds lik a modern-day calm stop >> i just want to make ver clear, people who experience attraction are not responsible individually or solely for the atmosphere of the sexual revelation it is a long time coming it came after we implemented the policies on contraception, and the sexual revolution ha gone through several phases. we just happened to be at th phase -- >> in 2014, kac

. >> anthony comstock is a nam you may not have heard o before for good reason.influential public official who has now bee really getting to the ash up o history because he imposed a oppressive ideology didn't question americans persona liberties. he was a fierce and zealou anti vice crusader, a religiou fanatic who is obsessed with reading society the things h considered to be smart and tomorrow for a time in american history it is able to use his position and influence to get a serie of anti obscenity laws passe in congress. and dozens of stat legislatures that came to be known as comstock laws at the federal level, th comstock act of 1873 made it illegal to send anything through the u.s. postal servic that, was quote, obscene lew lascivious, a filthy, book pamphlet pitcher paper lette writing print or any other indecent character and clothes. what was considered obscene or lewd or lascivious was not wel defined. classic works of literatur like what whitman's enduring collection of poetry, leaves o grass, became targets of comstock's anti obscenit movements and