A federal judge’s decision overturning the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of a pill widely used in medical abortions relied, in part, on a century-and-a-half old law called the Comstock Act. Enacted in 1873, the law—not enforced in decades—prohibited the mailing of contraceptives, “lewd” writings and any “instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing” that could be used in an abortion.

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