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A 2018 lawsuit brought by a member of The Satanic Temple (TST) against a Missouri abortion law spurred a debate about religious liberty and abortion rights. Judy Doe, the name given to the plaintiff in the suit, claimed that the state of Missouri’s law requiring that a woman seeking an abortion receive a pamphlet informing her that human life began at conception violated Doe's religious beliefs as a member of the temple. TST, as a recognized religious organization, can file lawsuits citing religious discrimination. And one of its members, Doe, did indeed file a lawsuit against a particular abortion law in Missouri. But the suit was dismissed in June 2020. This is not the first time the group or its members have filed similar cases on religious-liberty grounds. Doe’s lawsuit, filed in February 2018, focused on a state law that required a woman seeking an abortion to receive an informed consent booklet. The booklet, in accordance with the law, says: The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique, living human being. In the court document, Doe argued that such a statement violated her beliefs as a member of TST. Founded in 2013, TST is a nontheistic religion with roots in political activism and seeks to encourage benevolence and empathy and reject tyrannical authority. The temple’s tenets state that access to safe abortions free from state interference is a religious right. The Satanic Tenets include the following: The temple argues that the First Amendment of the Constitution’s establishment clause prevents the government from making any law respecting an establishment of religion, meaning the government is forbidden from actions that unduly favor one religion over another. According to the temple, such state laws interfere with their religious belief and practices: In her 2018 court filing, the plaintiff argued: The lawsuit was dismissed in June 2020 in a federal appeals court, where a judge agreed with a lower court's ruling against Doe in 2019 on the grounds that, based on the plaintiff’s arguments, Missouri could not avoid legislating on the issue. The appeals court said: Some religions, including Catholicism, embrace the view that life begins at conception. Others, like Doe’s Satanism, do not. Any theory of when life begins necessarily aligns with some religious beliefs and not others. So under Doe’s theory, Missouri’s only option would be to avoid legislating in this area altogether. TST told Snopes that it would appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The organization believes the case was valid, as the court’s decision refused to consider Doe’s undue-burden argument, which is the legal standard courts use to determine whether an abortion restriction violates the Constitution. This refusal suggested to TST that the court recognizes the validity of that claim and is avoiding having to consider its applicability so that they will not have to rule in our favor. TST's petition responding to the June ruling, which the group provided to Snopes, said: The Missouri Tenet explicitly communicates the religious doctrine of the Catholic Church on when a human being comes into existence, regardless of whether it also communicates the State’s secular value judgment of promoting fetal life. It therefore violates the Establishment Clause. Based on court documents, media coverage surrounding the lawsuit, and the statement from TST itself, we therefore rate this claim about The Satanic Temple suing Missouri over abortion as True.
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