Anti-mafia laws, long used to dismantle criminal empires, may become the next tool to restrict abortion.

A January report from Americans United for Life (AUL), a leading anti-abortion group, called on prosecutors to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against abortion clinics and funds.

The group argues that mailing abortion pills violates the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that bans sending certain materials through the mail. Section 1461 of the law deems “obscene” or “crime-inciting” materials to be “nonmailable.”

Some states that ban abortion, including Texas, also make it illegal to “aid or abet” an abortion. That could mean helping someone obtain, travel to, or pay for care. Prosecutors could, theoretically, argue that doing these things repeatedly—even across state lines—adds up to a “pattern” of illegal activity.

That’s where RICO, a law usually used to go after organized crime, could come into the picture.

AUL’s legal strategy essentially links the Comstock Act to RICO: Comstock could provide a basis for banning abortion pills by mail, while RICO could be used to pursue wider charges against anyone accused of running what prosecutors consider a repeated, coordinated, and illegal operation to provide patients with abortion pills.

This combined approach could sweep up everyone involved in medication abortion care, including the doctors who prescribe the pills, the patients who take them, and the abortion funds that help people pay for the treatment, lawyers said in interviews with Rewire News Group. Even major pharmacy chains, like CVS and Walgreens, that dispense abortion pills could be found in breach of Comstock, then slapped with a RICO charge.

Experts warn that using RICO laws against abortion funds has yet to be tested in court, and any attempt would likely face significant legal challenges. But RICO has already been used to threaten abortion access on a small scale.

In 2023, the small New Mexico city of Eunice sued New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Attorney General Raúl Torrez over a state law prohibiting municipalities from interfering in their residents’ right to reproductive care. Eunice’s suit argued its rule limiting abortion clinics’ activity was valid, because it would force clinics to comply with the federal Comstock Act, which the city claimed overrode state law.

The suit also cited RICO as another tool to target providers. Eunice argued that repeated actions to assist abortions—such as financing, transporting, or providing medication—could be treated as a “pattern of illegal activity” under the law.

New Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously........

© Rewire.News