Satanic Temple files new lawsuit against Missouri pro-life laws

In a press release sent to the pro-abortion blog Jezebel, the Satanic Temple has announced that on Tuesday it filed a new federal lawsuit over Missouri’s 72-hour waiting period and informed-consent requirements for abortion.

Live Action News has previously reported on the group’s prior attempt to challenge Missouri law in state court, which claimed the 72-hour waiting period poses an “unnecessary burden” and “offends [Satanists’] sincerely held religious beliefs.” The new suit reiterates their position that having to wait to abort “violates our right to free exercise,” but primarily focuses on informed consent, arguing that it violates the First Amendment’s prohibition on government establishment of religion.

“Specifically, the state materials declare fetal tissue — in utero, not viable, and starting at conception — to constitute a ‘unique human being with a life of its own, separate and apart from the woman whose uterus it occupies,’” Satanic Temple spokesman Lucien Greaves (also known as Doug Mesner) said. “The question of when life begins is absolutely a religious opinion, and the state has no business proselytizing religious beliefs.”

But as Live Action News has frequently covered, statements such as the one Greaves calls “religious opinion” can be found in many mainstream scientific textbooks. The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology by Dr. Keith Moore says that “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being,” while in The Human Reproductive System, Dr. Morris Krieger writes that “the human being…begins life as a fertilized ovum.”