The Satanic Temple just will not give up fighting for the so-called “right” to abort an unborn baby.
This week, the pro-abortion group filed a new appeal against a Missouri informed consent law, KUTV 2 reports.
The Satanic group’s lawsuit argues that the state forced “Judy Doe” to receive a booklet with “factually inaccurate” information that is “designed to dissuade women from getting an abortion.” The group claims the law violates her First Amendment religious freedom.
Earlier this year, the Missouri Supreme Court threw out a similar challenge by the Satanic group. However, they hope for success with this lawsuit before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Missouri law in question requires abortion facilities to provide women with information about the development of her unborn baby, including the opportunity to view the ultrasound of her unborn baby, the risks of abortion and alternatives available to them. All of the information is based on scientific facts and research. The law also requires a 72-hour waiting period between the informed consent and the abortion.
However, the Satanic group claims the law pushes religious beliefs on women who are seeking abortions. In the lawsuit, the group points to a 1989 ruling by the Eighth Circuit “which explicitly states that the life of each human being begins at conception is ‘an impermissible state adoption of a theory when life begins.’”
According to the Satanists, informed consent laws violate two core tenants of their beliefs: First, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,” and, second, “Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.”
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Spokesman Lucien Greaves expressed hope that their lawsuit will succeed.
“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,” he said.
However, it is the Satanic group that is letting beliefs get in the way of facts. Scientifically, it is well accepted that a unique, new human life comes into being at conception. Numerous medical textbooks, prominent scientists and even some abortion activists admit it is scientifically accurate.
The radical Satanists group has been trying to stop fact-based laws in Missouri for years.
In February, the Missouri Supreme Court dismissed another one of its lawsuits. Judge Laura Denvir Stith and four fellow justices said Doe could have refused to accept the booklet. She also said the state does not require ultrasounds prior to abortions; rather, ultrasounds are a routine procedure conducted by abortion facilities.
“(T)he informed consent law neither requires a pregnant woman to read the booklet in question nor requires her to have or pay for an ultrasound,” Stith wrote in her ruling. “And, while Ms. Doe mentions the 72-hour waiting period, she does not allege how that waiting period conflicts with her religion nor that it was an undue burden, nor did she seek to enjoin its enforcement prior to the expiration of that waiting period.”
At the time, St. Louis Public Radio reported Chief Justice Zell M. Fischer wrote a concurring opinion that refuted the Satanists’ religious freedom claims. He said the U.S. Supreme Court “has made it clear that state speech is not religious speech solely because it ‘happens to coincide’ with a religious tenet.”
The Satanic Temple is heavily involved in abortion activism in the U.S. Its members have filed multiple lawsuits challenging state abortion regulations.
Some of its members also attempt to intimidate peaceful pro-life sidewalk counselors through gruesome protests. In 2016, pro-life advocates outside of a Detroit, Michigan Planned Parenthood faced a disturbing scene when a group from the Satanic Temple arrived to counter-protest wearing baby masks and carrying whips. They held a similar protest on Good Friday in 2017.
Breitbart once described the Satanic Temple’s actions as a “pro-abortion crusade to come to the aid of America’s largest abortion provider,” Planned Parenthood.
