Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and sent the abortion debate back to the states, pro-abortion zealots have been in total free fall. One desperate attempt to undermine the court’s Dobbs decision is to weaponize religious freedom in the service of the cult of abortion.
For example, take a recent lawsuit filed against the state of Florida. Rabbi Barry Silver, a former civil rights lawyer and Democratic state representative, sued the state over a bill that would ban abortions after 15 weeks, arguing that it infringes on religious liberty. Silver claims that the new law “establishes as the law of the State of Florida, a particular religious view about abortion and when life begins, which is contrary to the views of Plaintiff, its members, congregants, and supporters as well as many other Floridians.”
In statements to Time magazine, he asserts that the “First Amendment, which is the first one that they enacted, upon which all other freedoms are based, was designed to prevent the exact type of thing that we see now: the merger of a radical fundamentalist type of Christianity with the state.” He adds that this law “criminalizes the practice of Judaism.”
Criminalizes Judaism? Sheesh.
Setting aside for a moment whether Rabbi Silver can file suit on behalf of unnamed and unidentified women who may someday be aggrieved by the state law, it’s worth asking whether there is any validity to the claim that Florida’s abortion law interferes with the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom for members of Silver’s congregation.
I doubt it.
Many laws govern areas of life that are addressed differently by organized religions. This doesn’t mean that the government interferes with free exercise or establishes a religion in violation of the Constitution. Silver may think the Florida law is over-inclusive when it offers protection for the unborn after 15 weeks, but that doesn’t mean it interferes with religious freedom.
And let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Silver is correct when he states that if “a fetus poses a threat to the health or emotional well-being of its mother, at any stage of gestation up until birth, Jewish law requires the mother to abort the pregnancy and protect herself.” Does this mean that pregnant Jewish women in Florida will be forced to choose between compliance with state law and religious teaching? Not at all. In fact, Florida’s bill allows exceptions when the health of the mother is in peril. (It’s worth noting that medical experts say induced abortion is not necessary to treat pregnancy complications.)
Seven other Florida clergy members — two Christians, three Jews, one Unitarian Universalist, and a Buddhist — recently filed suits similar to Silver’s. “Catholics for Choice” plans on joining in as a “friend of the court” in support. And, not to be left out, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin goes one step further. She advocates conscience exemptions for patients and doctors.
The Supreme Court has observed that “religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection.” But whatever your opinion is on the moral implications of abortion, the nature of personhood, or even this Supreme Court, we mustn’t be fooled by this naked attempt to convert abortion advocacy into religious exercise.
The misuse of the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom to attack restrictions on abortion may be unusual, but it’s not without precedent. For example, Texas’s Heartbeat Bill met with significant opposition last fall by a group claiming that the federal government must provide its members in Texas unregulated access to medical abortions as a matter of religious freedom.
After the Supreme Court declined an emergency request by abortion providers to halt the Texas heartbeat law, leaders of this sect sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration requesting access to abortifacients, substances that induce abortion. Being able to abort freely was “consistent with our tenets that call for bodily autonomy and acting in accordance with best scientific evidence,” they claimed. The group even boasted of having created a “ritual” surrounding the abortion process.
The name of the group? The Satanic Temple.
Andrea Picciotti-Bayer runs the Conscience Project and is director of strategy for the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, the only national university of the Catholic Church in America.
