Satanic Temple Fights Abortion Restrictions, on ‘Religious Grounds’

The Missouri Supreme Court is considering whether some of the state’s abortion restrictions violate the religious beliefs of a woman who is part of the Satanic Temple.

An attorney for the woman made the unusual argument Tuesday as he asked Missouri’s highest court to block the state’s mandatory three-day waiting period for abortions and requirements that doctors providing abortions give women a booklet that says “the life of each human being begins at conception,” offer them an ultrasound and give them an opportunity to hear the fetal heartbeat.

The woman traveled from southeastern Missouri to St. Louis for an abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015. The woman, whose name is not revealed in court documents, did eventually obtain an abortion. But in a letter to her doctors that was included in court documents, she wrote that some of the state’s restrictions on abortion conflict with her beliefs to follow scientific understanding of the world.

The Satanic Temple, based in Salem, Mass., doesn’t believe in a literal Satan but sees the biblical Satan as a metaphor for rebellion against tyranny. The group has waged religious battles around the U.S. in recent years, including pushing unsuccessfully to install a statute of the goat-headed idol Baphomet outside the Arkansas and Oklahoma state capitols as counterpoints to Ten Commandments monuments. Members also proposed “After School Satan Clubs” in elementary schools from Oregon to Georgia where evangelical Christian “Good News Clubs” are operating.

James MacNaughton, an attorney for the Satanic Temple member suing over Missouri’s abortion restrictions, told the state Supreme Court that the government “should not be in the business of preaching.” (Read more from “Satanic Temple Fights Abortion Restrictions, on ‘Religious Grounds'” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.