Satanic Temple files another lawsuit over Missouri’s abortion laws

JEFFERSON CITY — Another woman has sued the state because she feels its abortion laws violate her religious beliefs, according to federal court documents.

The woman is a member of the Satanic Temple, which has already filed two other similar lawsuits recently, one of which is being heard in the state’s Supreme Court. At issue is the state’s requirement that women seeking abortions wait three days and read a pamphlet stating life “begins at conception.”

“With a bald theocratic imposition of abortion restrictions into Missouri state law, and a continued expansion of religious privilege and exemption,” the Temple’s spokesperson, Lucien Greaves, said in a statement, “Missouri lawmakers are going to be forced to accept that there are religious perspectives, just as deeply-held, that may directly contradict their own religious beliefs and directives.”

The woman in the new lawsuit, filed Feb. 28, is a Missouri resident and attempted to get an abortion in St. Louis, according to the complaint. Like the woman in the supreme court case, she is identified only by an alias, “Judy Doe.”

Greaves contended that the new lawsuit will show opposition to Missouri’s law is widespread.

“With a new suit already filed while the state Supreme Court deliberates on our previous complaint, I believe we’ve effectively given the lie to the Attorney General’s Office insinuations throughout the hearings thus far that this issue was an isolated affair insofar as The Satanic Temple membership’s religious liberty is concerned,” he said.

In the Supreme Court case, the attorney general’s office has argued that the state’s laws protecting religious freedom do not apply, according to the Associated Press. They would only apply if the woman was blocked from practicing her beliefs or forced into doing something against her religion, the office argued.

The lawyer for the Temple member, James McNaughton, told the court the state should not dictate how a person practices their religious beliefs.

“It is a bedrock principle of our culture (and) of our country that we choose for ourselves what to believe by way of religious beliefs,” he said. “It’s not the business of government to tell us that.”

Since the case was first heard on Jan. 23, the justices have not yet made a ruling.

Members of the Satanic Temple do not believe in a literal Satan. They describe themselves as “an association of politically aware Satanists, secularists, and advocates for individual liberty.”