The Satanic Temple, a Salem, Massachusetts-based religious association, has filed a lawsuit against Indiana’s near-total abortion ban, claiming that it violates several provisions of America’s constitution and the temple’s tenets.
According to the lawsuit, the temple members claim that the near-total abortion ban infringes on the constitutional rights of its female members in Indiana who are involuntarily pregnant due to the failure of birth control measures.
They say that at about 24 weeks of pregnancy, a fetus is part of the pregnant woman’s body and not imbued with any humanity or existence separate from her.
The lawsuit says that as such a pregnant woman is entitled to terminate her pregnancy through abortion in accordance with the temple’s Tenet III — “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone" — and the Satanic Abortion Ritual, which includes the recitation of the tenet and other affirmations.
The Satanic Temple boasts about 1.5 million members worldwide, including 11,300 members in Indiana.
The temple members don’t believe in the worship of Biblical Satan and instead venerate “the allegorical Satan described in the epic poem Paradise Lost — the defender of personal sovereignty against the dictates of religious authority”.
The lawsuit also says that Indiana’s abortion ban compels nearly all women to carry their pregnancies to term and that infringes on the property right that each woman has to her uterus. It continues that the state cannot deny her the ability to exclude or remove a fetus from her uterus without just compensation as required by the Fifth Amendment.
The Satanic Temple is seeking a court order permanently barring Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and Attorney General Todd Rokita from enforcing the statute.
Meanwhile, Republican Owen County judge Kelsey Hanlon last week put the new abortion law on hold.
She said: “Regardless of whether the right is framed as a privacy right, a right to bodily autonomy, a right of self-determination, a bundle of liberty rights, or by some other appellation, there is a reasonable likelihood that decisions about family planning, including decisions about whether to carry a pregnancy to term — are included in (the Constitution’s) Article I, Section 1’s protections.”
