Satanists Take a Stand for Religious Liberty

The Satanic Temple is taking a fun,
if slightly flawed, stand for
both religious and reproductive freedom. The organization—which
claims to represent “politically aware Satanists, secularists, and
advocates for individual liberty”—is calling on women to opt out of
“informed consent” laws that require those seeking abortions to
listen to a
litany of inaccurate or irrelevant information.

In five states, such laws require telling women that the state
favors childbirth to abortion. Others inform about the disreputed
link between abortion and breast cancer or the possibility of a
nonexistent condition known as “post abortion syndrome.” 

“We believe that personal decisions should be made
with reference to only the best available, scientifically
valid information,” The Satanic Temple (TST) website states. It
urges like-minded women seeking abortions to print out a TST
template letter asserting “a religious exemption from the burden of
state ­mandated ‘informational’ abortion materials.” An excerpt
from the letter: 

As an adherent to the principles of the Satanic Temple, my
sincerely held religious beliefs are:

• My body is inviolable and subject to my will alone.
• I make any decision regarding my health based on the best
  scientific understanding of the world, even if the science does not
  comport with the religious or political beliefs of others.
• My inviolable body includes any fetal or embryonic tissue I
  carry so long as that tissue is unable to survive outside my body
  as an independent human being.

(…) My informed consent is based solely on information you
provide which, in the exercise of your independent medical
judgment, is materially relevant to my health (excluding the
present or future condition of any fetal or embryonic tissue inside
my body) and is scientifically true and accurate. My informed
consent is not based on Political Information.

This letter constitutes my acknowledgment that you have offered
Political Information to me. I reject that Political Information
because it offends my sincerely held religious beliefs. Please
attach this letter to any forms you are required to keep regarding
my informed consent.

Groups have been challenging politically-motivated abortion
consent laws for years, but TST says it is the first to suggest a
religious exemption possibility. Stunt or serious move, I think the
idea is pretty great.

The “flawed” part is TST linking its initiative to the recent
Supreme Court ruling on religious exemptions to the Obamacare
contraception mandate. “While we feel we have a strong case for an
exemption regardless of the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Supreme Court
has decided that religious beliefs are so sacrosanct that they can
even trump scientific fact,” said TST
spokesman Lucien Greaves in a press release. “This was made
clear when they allowed Hobby Lobby to claim certain contraceptives
were abortifacients, when in fact they are not.” 

Though Hobby Lobby’s opposition was based on a belief that
certain forms of contraception are abortion—an opinion contra the
wisdom of medical and scientific communities—the
abortifaciant-or-not status of these drugs wasn’t up for the
court’s consideration. And company owners against birth control
because it prevents pregnancy, even without thinking it terminates
a pregnancy, could still prevail under the Supreme Court’s
Hobby Lobby logic. The point isn’t that religious beliefs
“trump” scientific facts but that they don’t have to depend on
them—it doesn’t matter if intrauterine devices actually cause
abortions or Allah actually requires a certain amount of prayer per
day, only that religious individuals sincerely believe these things
are true. So TST’s Hobby Lobby parallels fail here, but
the larger religious freedom claim might just have merit.