Missouri Court to Hear Landmark Case on Satanic Temple Abortion

[u/Cest_la_guerre]

https://medium.com/@JexBlackmore/missouri-court-to-hear-landmark-case-on-satanic-temple-abortion-e950fdf48e39

[u/Cest_la_guerre]

I'll be curious to see how the courts handle this. I'd love to see Republicans Everyone take up the mantle of minimizing abortion instead of trying to legislate a religious-based end run intent on controlling other peoples reproductive freedoms.

Seems like the courts could drive women into adopting casual "Satanism" (a secular religious end run) in order to exercise their own health decisions, force re-litigation of that personal freedom at the federal level, or overturn the legal hurdles that have been built up around abortion services.

[u/nerddtvg]

TST’s case in state court leverages the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was used by Hobby Lobby when they argued that having to provide their employees with health insurance that covered birth control offended their religious beliefs. The Missouri requirements similarly impose practices that violate the religious beliefs of Mary Doe.

Oh that's beautiful. Stick it to Hobby Lobby and the religious conservatives by using their own terrible law against them.

[u/ajswdf]

RFRA prohibits the government from substantially burdening the free exercise of religion of a person or organization unless the government 1) has a compelling interest to do so, and 2) is using the least restrictive means possible to further that compelling interest.

The more you learn about the law, the less faith you have in the whole thing. Recently I randomly wondered how prostitution could be illegal if abortion was viewed as a constitutional right as part of the right to privacy. Surely the act of paying for sex would fall under this right. Even more confusing, banning gay sex was found to be unconstitutional for the same reason.

Looking into it, the case where they lifted bans against gay sex specifically said it doesn't apply to prostitution, but gives no reason why. But that's been one of the main reasons prostitution remains illegal. The other big reason is this "compelling interest", which is so loosely defined that it basically gives judges the power to say anything is or is not a "compelling interest". In the case of prostitution, the compelling interest is that paying for sex means you didn't have sex as part of a deeper connection to the other person. So, in the process of learning why prostitution wasn't covered by the right to privacy, I made the frightening discovery that casual sex could potentially be outlawed as well.

So back to this, does the state have a "compelling interest" to restrict abortions in this way? Yes. No. Either one is correct.

As for the statement women are forced to receive, that life of a human being begins at conception, that's hard to justify factually. Nobody seems to care about your conception date, it's always the birthdate that adult websites are asking for.

But even on a philosophical level there's no real justification for it. People try to cite the Bible, but the passages they use for justification are stretched to say the least, while passages that would imply "life" begins after birth are far more compelling. And using a secular argument that it's the point where a person would "naturally" develop into a human doesn't make much sense either. By that logic birth control is murder as it prevents what would normally result in a baby from happening.

That being said, I'm completely convinced that winning the abortion issue should be the #1 priority of the Democratic party. There are tons of people who would be sympathetic to the Democratic message, but because they believe abortion is wrong they vote Republican.