Posted on 04/05/2024 9:51:47 PM PDT by Morgana
An Indiana court has ruled that the state's abortion ban violates the religious freedom of several Jews and religiously unaffiliated people who might seek abortions as the law's supporters remain confident it will withstand scrutiny from the Indiana Supreme Court.
Indiana Court of Appeals Judge Leanna Weismann published an opinion Thursday siding with five anonymous plaintiffs and the group Hoosier Jews for Choice. The plaintiffs asserted that the state's 2022 law prohibiting almost all abortions with exceptions in cases of a fetal anomaly or where the life or health of the mother is at risk violated the state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Weismann wrote that the law "provides that '[a] person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a [RFRA] violation' may assert a RFRA claim." The state RFRA law defines "person" as "[a]n organization," "a religious society" and "a group organized and operated primarily for religious purposes."
According to the decision, all the anonymous plaintiffs are either refraining from "seeking to become pregnant" or "physical intimacy." Two of the plaintiffs, an anonymous Jewish same-sex couple, believe that "life begins when a child takes [their] first breath after being born."
The plaintiffs also believe that "the life of a pregnant person, including their physical and mental health and wellbeing, takes precedence over the potential for life embodied in a fetus." The group, Hoosier Jews for Choice, maintains that "under Jewish law and religious doctrine, life does not begin at conception, and that a fetus is considered a physical part of the woman's body, not having a life of its own or independent rights."
Anonymous Plaintiff 2 is not affiliated with any particular religion but believes in a "supernatural force or power in the universe that connects all humans" and that "we are endowed with bodily autonomy."
The opinion states that "[h]er religious and spiritual beliefs guide her life and dictate that '[i]f a pregnancy or the birth of a child would not allow her to fully realize her humanity and inherent dignity, she would have to terminate her pregnancy ... even under circumstances which would not be permitted under [the Abortion Law].'"
Weissmann agreed that "Plaintiffs Have Shown Pregnancy Termination Qualifies as a Religious Exercise" and thus upheld a lower court ruling that "plaintiffs are entitled to a preliminary injunction barring the State's enforcement of the Abortion Law against them until the court rules on the merits of their claims."
In a statement issued Thursday, Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser, whose organization joined an amicus brief in the case, praised the ruling.
"The court rightly found that Indiana's abortion ban cannot override religious freedom protections in Indiana law," she said. "As we told the court, abortion bans undermine religious freedom by imposing one religious viewpoint on all of us. Abortion bans are a direct attack on the separation of church and state."
"If America is to make good on its promise of religious freedom, each of us must be free to make our own decisions about our own bodies based on our own beliefs," she added. "That's why we need a national recommitment to the separation of church and state. It's the shield that protects freedom without favor and equality without exception for all of us."
Mike Fichter, president of Indiana Right to Life, an activist organization that supported the legislation, lamented the decision, expressing confidence that the state's abortion law will eventually be upheld.
"Today's court ruling is wrongly decided," he said in a statement. "The Indiana Supreme Court has already ruled the state has a compelling interest in protecting unborn life, and Indiana's new abortion-restriction law is doing that by reducing Indiana abortions to the lowest level in five decades."
"We are confident Indiana will prevail against any claims that abortion — the intentional ending of an innocent and helpless human life — is a religious freedom."
Indiana is one of several states that have enacted near-total abortion bans or restricted abortions to the earliest weeks of a pregnancy following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 determination in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that the U.S. Constitution does not contain a right to abortion.
Indiana is not the first state to face litigation over the abortion restrictions it passed after the Dobbs decision. The pro-life group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America lists Arizona, Iowa, Utah and Wyoming as states where such laws are currently on hold due to legal challenges.
If abortion is upheld as a religious right for these people, then wouldn’t child sacrifice also have to be upheld as a religious right for Satanists? After all, it’s not whether the human being exterminated actually HAS sanctity that matters, it’s just whether a person’s religion views their extermination as either allowable or required.
Every argument these people use for abortion can also be used for child sacrifice up to any age.
Not murdering children violates “religious freedom”?
That would have to be - since this ruling says not allowing elective abortions violates “exercise of religion.”
As the mother of 5 children, all of my children were alive long before the first breath. This is a scientific fact, not religious speculation.
When I miscarried two of them, they died in utero. They had to be alive in utero, with heartbeats and souls, in order to die.
The only difference between the 3 that are living and the 2 that are gone is that they did not survive to be born. They were human beings, loved and wanted. They were not clumps of cells.
These women, with their twisted logic, are ghouls.
Nasty Jewish seculars lie incessantly about Jewish tradition and abortion. They have no Jewish traditional authorities who buy their bilge.
They just lie.
Repeat: They have no one fit to make tea for the greatest American rabbis like Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Moshe Feinstein, Avigdor Miller, et al, much less the most famous exponents of Jewish law from the past.
https://jewishprolifefoundation.org/pro-life-rabbis
I guess Ann Coulter was right when she said liberals consider abortion one of their sacraments.
Haven't they heard of pre-natal surgery?
My heart goes out to you. I also have lost 2 children in the womb - one at 12 weeks and the other at 42 weeks.
Ironically for those who claim that breathing makes a child a person, my daughter who died at 42 weeks may have died because she breathed in meconium.
Scripturally speaking, God says that the life of a creature is in its blood, not in its breath.
Ultimately, only the One who created human life has the right to take it back, and even with all the test-tube baby stuff, a human cannot make a baby. Only God can cause a sperm and ovum to unite in such a way to create a child.
This case stands to set really, really bad precedent because it allows any individual’s belief about another person’s sanctity to determine whether they may kill that person. According to the legal logic of this, as long as I believe that my religion says I can slaughter somebody I can, even if the laws recognize the sanctity of that person’s life. This would give wholesale authority for any Muslim to kill any non-Muslim because the Quran requires such killing.
The only way out of this kind of argument is to acknowledge what the 14th Amendment actually intended to say: that all biological humans have Constitutional protection.
Satanists like to murder and sacrifice people. That is part of there religion. So I guess we have to let them.
I don’t think it would be a stretch with this ruling to understand that we DO have a state sponsored religion and it is deeply financed and taught in our public schools. How about parents start suing school boards and their districts over that? Anti-religion is just religion still.
“Two of the plaintiffs, an anonymous Jewish same-sex couple,”
Oh great wise judge, please explain to me how a same sex couple has a right to an abortion. Are they planning to have a surrogate get knocked up and have the abortion?
Is she also saying atheists have no right to an abortion?
This is beyond words stupid.
EC
an anonymous Jewish same-sex couple,
How are they even part of the conversation?
What “standing” could they possibly have?
What a ridiculous ruling.
They unique individuals, separate of the mother’s tissue. These people apparently have never heard of DNA. Their argument is sick and flawed.
Of whom? Children?
Ask them FIRST.
From conception on these things have been proven convincingly:
1.) The cell(s), blastocyst, embryo, fetus, baby, is alive.
2.) It is human.
3.) It is a distinct human genotypically and phenotypically (immunologically) from mother and father.
4.) Though vulnerable it will, if cared for normally as the law requires, develop into an independent, sentient adult.
5.) Because of the above facts, it (he or she if you prefer) may not, at any time in this continuum, be deprived of life without due process (a trial or some other judgment), according to the Fifth Amendment.
Holy Father, please make this stop.
Indeed, it is a sacrament of the cult of death worship which is the religion of the Democratic Party and globalists everywhere.
I’m so disappointed to be a Hoosier right now.....
At it’s heart, despite myself being a pro-life person, there is something to be said for the ruling - our conscience, our deep beliefs are, like religion, our own. The deep problem with the idea is how far can it be allowed to go. Soviety does draw the lines somewhere.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.