United States | Lawyers, guns and babies

The Supreme Court hears arguments on abortion and firearms

The latter ruling may hinge on a 14th century British statute

|NEW YORK

WHILE REPUBLICANS were triumphing in Virginia, on the other side of the Potomac Republican-appointed judges considered cases involving two priorities of the conservative legal movement: guns and abortion. On November 1st, the justices heard nearly three hours of argument involving Texas’s notoriously harsh law banning abortion at six weeks’ gestation with no exception for rape or incest. Two days later another searing controversy came to their courtroom: the scope of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. With its transformation by Donald Trump’s three appointees, the court is primed to bolster gun rights and undermine the right to abortion.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Lawyers, guns and babies”

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