(LifeSiteNews) — Considering itself a primary trail-blazer in advancing the “right” to directly kill preborn girls and boys in womb, the Satanic Temple of New York City stepped out in front of the parade to lead yesterday’s feminists — and today’s “birthing people” — to what it hopes will be an effective means of restoring unrestricted preborn child killing in areas where it is no longer available.
After Friday’s glorious overturning of the infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, as leftists responded with rage, calling the decision “illegitimate,” promising to “defy” the law in this regard, and even asking “How have we not dismantled the government?” the Satanic Temple reiterated its own solution: establish religious exemptions, under the First Amendment religious freedom clause, to kill preborn children in their “religious abortion ritual.”
In recent years, Satanists have argued that any restriction to the killing of preborn children violates their religious beliefs. In 2015, the Satanic Temple filed a federal lawsuit against Missouri, claiming that state laws restricting abortion violate their “free exercise” of Satanism.
In 2020, they launched a campaign titled “Satanic Abortions Are Protected by Religious Liberty Laws,” and in the wake of the landmark Dobbs decision on Friday they reiterated their intention to circumvent the resulting restrictions to abortion in many places calling itself “the leading beacon of light in the battle for abortion access.”
The Satanic Temple is the leading beacon of light in the battle for abortion access. With Roe v Wade overturned, a religious exemption will be the only available challenge to many restrictions to access.
Learn More⤵️https://t.co/2ZiuuGq3tg pic.twitter.com/SIjyRWdoZN— The Satanic Temple (@satanic_temple_) June 24, 2022
Seeking to exploit this same constitutional principle to accomplish the same end of unrestricted abortion, over 140 Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, sponsored a May 17 “Jewish Rally for Abortion Justice” publicly affirming “abortion access is a Jewish value” and “banning abortions is a religious freedom issue.”
The adoption of this seemingly new strategy appears to be related to the May 2 leak of the U.S. Supreme Court draft majority opinion on the Dobbs case indicating the anticipated overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Earlier this month, a south Florida synagogue initiated litigation with this argument, filing a lawsuit against that state’s new 15-week abortion ban and arguing that the statute violates the “religious freedom” of Jews.
And after Friday’s landmark decision, many of these groups mourned while blasting the result as a violation of their religious beliefs and often presenting their advocacy for unrestricted abortion as representative for Jews as a whole, which is far from the truth.
But as Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, told LifeSiteNews in a recent interview, since, as a point of fact, abortion involves the direct “killing [of] an innocent human life … the government can in fact restrict [this act], even if someone is going to say, ‘My religious freedom requires me, requires me, in certain circumstances to abort.’”
While maintaining respect for sincerely held religious beliefs, the priest explained, “Nevertheless, the government can restrict someone’s religious freedom precisely out of an interest to protect others.”
To illustrate the point, Pavone made reference to several legal cases regarding a state’s ability to restrict religious practice due to a compelling interest with regard, specifically, to the practice of poisonous snake handling, which was performed in some churches throughout several southern states.
“Based on the words in the Gospel that ‘they will handle poisonous snakes and not be harmed,’ some of these churches had snake handling going on in their services,” he explained. Yet “for the protection of the lives of the congregation, the state came in [with legislation] and said, ‘You can’t do this.’”
And while some of these churches challenged the new laws with litigation, “the courts upheld [them],” ruling that though they recognize religious rights, when the state “has a compelling interest and when there’s no other way to advance that interest, [they can use] the least restrictive means [to do so].”
Thus, “in this case the state [of Florida] is asserting … its compelling interest, and it’s an interest in protecting human life,” Pavone said.
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