Satanic Temple Loses Lawsuit to Stop 72-Hour Waiting Period Before Abortion

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Aug 5, 2016   |   6:16PM   |   Jefferson City, MO

A judge threw out a Satanic Temple’s lawsuit this week after the group challenged a Missouri law requiring a 72-hour waiting period before a woman has an abortion.

Broadly reports U.S. District Judge Henry Edward Autrey ruled that the plaintiff “Mary Doe,” a member of the Satanic Temple, failed to show “sufficiently concrete injuries” from the law. The Satanic Temple lost a similar challenge at the state level in February.

The Missouri law requires that women wait 72 hours to have an abortion after an informed consent appointment. The law also requires that abortion facilities provide women with a booklet of information about abortion, its risks and alternatives, development facts about the unborn child, and state resources available for women and children.

The Satanic Temple argued that the law put an undue burden on women’s access to abortion and violated the group’s religious beliefs. The lawsuit asserts that “the State of Missouri is using its powers to…promote some, but not all, religious beliefs that Human Tissue is, from conception, a separate and unique human being whose destruction is morally wrong.”

The group said it plans to appeal the federal judge’s ruling.

The liberal news outlet Inquisitr reports more:

According to the lawsuit, “Mary Doe” unequivocally refused to read the booklet. According to Doe and the lawsuit, being forced to do so violates her religious beliefs as a member of the Satanic Temple. Included in the state-sanctioned material is a portion that tells women dealing with unwanted pregnancies that “life begins at conception.”

Despite refusing to read the legally-required informed consent pamphlet, Mary Doe was still required to remain pregnant for an additional 72 hours following her abortion request, per Missouri law. Despite the fact that her religious beliefs, in accordance with the tenets of the Satanic Temple, allow her to make her own personal healthcare decisions.

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According to the Satanic Temple, it was this forced gestation that violated the religious rights of one of its members, who was also the plaintiff in the Missouri abortion case.

Breitbart recently described the Satanic Temple’s actions as a “pro-abortion crusade to come to the aid of America’s largest abortion provider,” Planned Parenthood.

In April, pro-lifers outside of a Detroit, Michigan Planned Parenthood faced a disturbing scene when a group of Satanists arrived to counter-protest wearing baby masks and carrying whips. Citizens for a Pro-Life Society organized the pro-life event as part of a larger #ProtestPP movement to expose the abortion giant’s deadly trade of aborting unborn babies and trafficking their body parts.

During the pro-life event, a local Satanist group arrived and conducted a disturbingly grotesque counter-protest. Some of the Satanists dressed in masks and diapers to look like babies, while others dressed in black, carried whips and flailed the “babies.” Others dressed as mock priests and nuns. They marched around the pro-lifers and acted out the disturbing scene in front of the pro-life banners, crying and crawling and waving their arms in a perverted theatrical display.

The Satanic Temple is well-known in Michigan for openly challenging pro-lifers’ work. Last winter, its leader Jex Blackmore wrote a blog about her experience aborting her unborn baby. She called the experience “surreal.” Then on Good Friday in March, the group organized a counter-protest to mock pro-lifers who were holding an Easter prayer vigil outside of an Ann Arbor abortion facility, LifeNews reported.

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