The FDA approves the first-ever non-prescription birth-control pill

If the decision was sobering, the concurring opinion was chilling. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, making states the new arbiters of abortion policy, Justice Clarence Thomas laid out a blueprint for what could come next. Harnessing the same legal logic that the court used to topple Roe, he called on his colleagues to do away with a trio of other precedents. Among them was Griswold v Connecticut, a 1965 case that established a married couple’s right to buy contraceptives without government restriction. Wide-eyed progressives braced for abortion battles to morph into a war over birth control.