The latest lawsuit challenging restrictions on reproductive freedom is the weirdest one yet. It also inspired a frenzy of responses and served as fodder for QAnon conspiracy theorists.
Earlier this week, the Satanic Temple sued to block abortion bans in Idaho on the basis that it violates religious freedom. It filed a similar suit in Indiana.
The Satanic Temple, a nontheistic religious group some say are just organized trollers, claims that the “Satanic Abortion Ritual” is protected by the First Amendment. It asserts that forced birth is an unconstitutional seizure of property without compensation—that property being the uterus of the pregnant person. The temple further claims that forced pregnancy and birth is a form of involuntary servitude prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment and has challenged abortion bans on religious freedom grounds.
“We believe securing our members’ access to abortion to be of the utmost importance,” the temple’s Director of Campaign Operations Erin Helian said in a statement. “Forcing people to go through pregnancy when they do not choose to is blatantly an overreach of these extremist officials’ religious dogmatism into politics, and [we] will not allow that to stand.”
Others have made similar claims that abortion is protected under religious freedom, and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action suit in Indiana on the same principle. But asserting it’s a Satanic ritual is a novel argument. The temple’s case prompted other Satanists to weigh in and deny it.
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