Restricted access to abortions infringes upon the religious rights of Satanists, as well as “other people of faith” including Jews, Episcopalians, and Unitarians, argues POLITICO. The wildly offensive comparison between Satanists and others comes almost a year after the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v Wade.
Challenges against the decision by “clergy members and practitioners of everything from Judaism to Satanism” are being launched in state and federal courts, POLITICO notes, claiming Satanists in Texas, Idaho, and Louisiana, argue “the laws infringe upon their congregants’ belief in bodily autonomy and right to practice abortion as a religious ritual.”
Jewish challengers in Kentucky are citing religious texts that say life begins when a baby takes its first breath, while in Florida, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Unitarian Universalist Church sued to overturn a recent 15-week abortion ban.
The Satanic Temple’s religious abortion ritual involves, “the recitation of two of our Tenets and a personal affirmation that is ceremoniously intertwined with the abortion.” The affirmation requires a member to say: “By my body, my blood, by my will, it is done.”
By pursuing legal action against abortion bans, Satanists are “chip[ping] away at the assumption that all religious people oppose abortion,” POLITICO states.
