The Supreme Court ruling in the Hobby Lobby case raises at least two questions: How will it affect access to contraception, and what do the drugs and devices the company objected to on religious grounds actually do?

A growing body of evidence shows that it is already hard to obtain certain kinds of contraception, and the ruling seems likely to increase barriers. A significant number of pharmacists — 6 percent in one study — say they would refuse to dispense oral contraceptives or other medications to patients for moral reasons if they were permitted to do so.

This dynamic played out in a recent study by a health services researcher, Tracey Wilkinson, who had callers pose as adolescents to see if pharmacies had emergency contraception and would dispense it – legally – to them.

The first key finding was that in about 20 percent of pharmacies, no emergency contraception, like Plan B, was available at all. Even when it was, however, almost 20 percent of the time adolescents were told, incorrectly, that they couldn’t have it under any circumstances. They were told this significantly more often when calling pharmacies in low-income neighborhoods.