A judge in Missouri threw out a case brought by more than a dozen Christian, Jewish, and Unitarian Universalist leaders who support abortion rights. The judge said that lawmakers who passed a strict abortion ban were not trying to force their religious views on everyone in the state.
Last year, the groups asked for a permanent injunction that would stop Missouri from enforcing its abortion law and a statement that parts of it are unconstitutional.
“In recognition that Almighty God is the creator of life, that all men and women are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those is life,” says one part of the law in question.
This was Judge Jason Sengheiser’s decision on Friday. He said that the preamble to the Missouri Constitution uses similar language when it talks about “profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.” He said that the rest of the rules being challenged do not use any direct religious language.
It may be against some religious beliefs to say that life starts at conception, but Sennheiser wrote that this is not always a religious belief. This means that it doesn’t stop any man or woman from worshiping or not worshiping Almighty God, depending on what their consciences tell them.
The religious leaders were sued by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the National Women’s Law Center. In a joint statement, the two groups said they were thinking about their legal choices.
It said, “Missouri’s abortion ban is a direct attack on religious freedom, reproductive freedom, and the separation of church and state.”
Lawyers for the state have said that just because some people who support the law are religiously against abortion doesn’t mean that the law forces those views on other people.
Sennheiser also said that the state has tried to limit and punish abortion in the past, pointing to laws from more than one hundred years ago. “The only thing that changed was that Roe was overturned, which made it possible for these new rules,” he said.
As soon as the Supreme Court made its decision in 2022, Republican Gov. Mike Parson and Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed papers to instantly make a 2019 law that would ban abortions “except in cases of medical emergency.” That law had a clause that said it would only go into effect if Roe v. Wade was overturned.
To do or try to do an abortion is against the law and can get you five to fifteen years in prison. People who work in medicine who do this could also lose their licenses. The law says that women who have abortions can’t be charged with a crime.
Missouri already had some of the strictest abortion rules in the country, and the number of abortions there had dropped significantly. Instead, people were going to clinics in Illinois and Kansas, which are just across the state line.
