“State speech is not religious speech solely because it ‘happens to coincide’ with a religious tenet”

According to The Catholic News Agency, the Missouri Supreme Court has rejected Mary Doe’s claim that a state law requiring a 72-hour wait period before an abortion violates her freedom of religion. The woman travelled to St. Louis from southeastern Missouri in 2015, but the Planned Parenthood declined to let her forgo the waiting period based on her religion’s espousal of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy.

Are you committing murder when you have an abortion? That’s a religious question.

-MacNaughton

The Satanic Temple member’s New Jersey lawyer, W. James MacNaughton claimed that equating abortion to murder is religious speech. He also argued that this case was a clear case of religious oppression, akin to the Hobby Lobby decision. That fails to recognize that we have always promoted life as a nation, and the Hobby Lobby decision promotes life, and using that to support Mary Doe would denigrate life.