Missouri abortion ban wasn’t about lawmakers imposing religious beliefs, judge says
A Missouri judge says lawmakers who passed a restrictive abortion ban were not trying to impose their religious beliefs on everyone in the state, dismissing a case filed by more than a dozen Christian, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist leaders seeking abortion rights supports.
The groups requested a permanent injunction last year, Missouri was barred from enforcing its abortion law and declared provisions conflict with the state constitution.
One section of the law in question reads: “Recognizing that Almighty God is the author of life, that all men and women are ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life.’”
Judge Jason Sengheiser said in his ruling Friday that there is similar language in the preamble of the Missouri Constitution expressing “deep reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the universe.” The remaining challenged provisions did not contain explicit religious language, he said.
“Although the determination that life begins at conception may conflict with some religious beliefs, it is not necessarily a religious belief in itself,” Sengheiser wrote. “As such, it does not prevent all men and women from worshiping or not worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience.”
The Americans united for the separation of the church & The state and the National Women’s Law Center, which is suing on behalf of the religious leaders, responded in a joint statement saying they were considering their legal options.
“Missouri’s abortion ban is a direct attack on the separation of church and state, religious freedom and reproductive freedom,” the statement said.
Lawyers for the state did that counteracted that the fact that some supporters of the law oppose abortion on religious grounds does not mean that the law imposes their beliefs on anyone else.
Sengheiser added that the state has historically tried to restrict and criminalize abortion, citing laws that are more than a century old. “Essentially, the only thing that changed is that Roe was reversed, opening the door for this further regulation,” he said.
Within minutes of the 2022 Supreme Court decision, then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Governor Mike Parson, both Republicans, filed paperwork to immediately enact a 2019 law ban abortions “except in cases of medical emergency.” That law contained a provision that made it effective only if Roe v. Wade was overturned.
The law makes it a crime punishable by five to fifteen years in prison to perform or induce an abortion. Medical professionals who do this may also lose their license. The law says that women who have an abortion cannot be prosecuted.
Missouri already had some of the nation’s stricter abortion laws and had seen a significant drop in the number of abortions performed, with residents instead traveling to clinics just across the state line in Illinois and Kansas.
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This story has been updated to correct that Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, not 2023.