Listen live: Abortion pill case heard by Supreme Court

Two years after the Supreme Court erased the constitutional right to an abortion, creating a patchwork of access across the country, the justices could now pave the way toward a national ban. In a case they will consider Tuesday about access to the abortion drug mifepristone, the court could give legitimacy to a 19th-century obscenity law that some abortion opponents are promoting as a de facto federal abortion ban that just needs enforcing. Even if the court decides the case without addressing the 1873 Comstock Act − which it could easily do − the justices could restrict access to mifepristone in a way that would make it more difficult for millions of women to end a pregnancy in states where abortion is legal.