ST. LOUIS (AP) – A lawsuit was filed on behalf of several Missouri faith leaders on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision asking the court to throw out the state’s abortion law, alleging that lawmakers openly invoked personal religious beliefs. plan size.
The lawsuit filed in St. Louis is the latest of many to challenge restrictive abortion laws imposed by conservative states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. The landmark ruling leaves abortion rights up to each state to decide.
Since then, religious abortion rights advocates have increasingly used religious freedom lawsuits to protect abortion access. The religious freedom complaints are among nearly three dozen post-Roe lawsuits filed against 19 states’ abortion bans, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
The Missouri lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction barring the state from enforcing abortion laws and a declaration that the law’s provisions violate the Missouri Constitution. The plaintiffs included 12 Christian and Jewish leaders.
“What the lawsuit is saying is that if you legislate your religious beliefs into law, you’re imposing your beliefs on other people and forcing all of us to live according to our narrow beliefs,” said Michelle Banker of the National Women’s Law Center, lead attorney at the case. “And that hurts us. That denies us our human rights.”
Within minutes of last year’s Supreme Court decision, Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Governor Mike Parson, both Republicans, filed documents to immediately implement a 2019 law banning abortion “except in cases of medical emergency.” The statute contained a provision that would only be effective if Roe v. Wade was overthrown.
The law makes it a crime punishable by 5 to 15 years in prison to perform or cause an abortion. Medical professionals who do so can also lose their licenses. The law states that women who have abortions cannot be prosecuted.
Missouri already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the state and has reduced the number of abortions performed, with residents even traveling to clinics across state lines in Illinois and Kansas.
The lawsuit said sponsors and supporters of the Missouri measure “repeatedly emphasized their religious intent to enact the legislation.” It quotes the sponsor of the bill, Republican Rep. Nick Schroer, saying that “as a Catholic, I believe that life begins at conception and therefore. built on the findings of our legislature. A co-sponsor, Republican Rep. Barry Hovis, said this is motivation” from the side of the Bible,” according to the lawsuit.
Lawsuits in several other countries are taking a similar approach.
In Indiana, lawyers for five anonymous women – who are Jewish, Muslim and spiritual – and the advocacy group Hoosier Jews for Choice have argued that the state ban infringes on beliefs. The lawsuit specifically highlights the Jewish teaching that a fetus is a living person at birth and that Jewish law prioritizes the life and health of its mother.
The court’s ruling in favor of the woman is being appealed by the Indiana attorney general’s office, which is asking the state Supreme Court to consider the case.
In Kentucky, three Jewish women are suing, claiming the state’s ban violates their religious rights under the state constitution and religious freedom laws. He said Kentucky’s Republican-dominated legislature “implemented sectarian theology” by banning nearly all abortions. The ban remains in effect while the Kentucky Supreme Court considers a separate case challenging the law.
But Banker said the Missouri lawsuit is unique because while plaintiffs in other states claim harm, “we’re saying that all laws violate the separation of church and state and we’re trying to get them all overturned.”