Editor’s note. This is excerpted from a post that appeared at LifeSiteNews and is reposted with permission.
The secular advocacy group Satanic Temple filed a lawsuit against the state of Missouri in hopes of overturning its requirement that women be given critical information before going through with aborting their children.
Missouri law places a 72-hour waiting period on abortion. It also requires abortionists to provide women considering abortion with information about its medical risks and the humanity of the preborn child, including a definitive statement that “the life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being.”
The Satanic Temple, which doesn’t believe the supernatural literally exists but embraces Satan’s name as a “symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority,” announced that it’s suing over the law on behalf of a member who was subjected to its provisions while seeking an abortion (the statement doesn’t mention whether she ultimately aborted her child).
The law’s affirmation of preborn life is a statement of fact backed by settled science, but the Temple claims it was actually “religious content,” the requirement of which was deemed constitutes “impermissible state adoption of a theory when life begins” by the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals in 1989.
“The only way for The Satanic Temple to lose this case is if the Eighth Circuit reverses itself, which is highly unusual, or goes to impossibly great lengths to avoid ruling on the issues it is being presented with,” Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves claimed. “While I don’t put it past the courts, I am optimistic that the Eighth Circuit will adhere to the law and The Satanic Temple will prevail.”
The challenge appears to be a repetition of a claim the Satanic Temple has tried and failed to advance in the past. In 2015, then-Attorney General Chris Koster noted in response that the Temple could not “cite a single opinion from any state or federal court holding that a state’s expression of a value judgment about abortion constitutes an establishment of religion,” and that the “Eighth Circuit decision on which they rely was reversed by the Supreme Court 26 years ago” (emphasis in the original). …
Chelsea Garcia is a political writer with a special interest in international relations and social issues. Events surrounding the war in Ukraine and the war in Israel are a major focus for political journalists. But as a former local reporter, she is also interested in national politics.
Chelsea Garcia studied media, communication and political science in Texas, USA, and learned the journalistic trade during an internship at a daily newspaper. In addition to her political writing, she is pursuing a master's degree in multimedia and writing at Texas.
