Satanic Temple Says It’s Immune from SCOTUS Abortion Ruling on Fetal Remains
The Satanic Temple weighed in on a Tuesday SCOTUS ruling saying that it violates the temple members’ religious liberty by requiring the burying or cremation of fetal remains.
The group based in Salem, Massachusetts, said in a Tuesday press release that burial of fetal remains is “punitive, superfluous, and insulting.”
The Satanic Temple said it refuses to comply with this ruling, as it violates “the inviolability of one’s body” and that Satanic members “believe that nonviable fetal tissue is part of the woman who carries it.”
“The Satanic Temple declares its members exempt from Indiana law regarding fetal remains,” the group’s Twitter page announced Wednesday.
The Satanic Temple declares its members exempt from Indiana law regarding fetal remains pic.twitter.com/nPDvl1W6xv
— The Satanic Temple (@satanic_temple_) May 29, 2019
“State impositions of ceremonial requirements dictating its disposal, barring any plausible medical or sanitary concerns, is a violation of TST’s Free Exercise allowing Satanists to contextualize the termination of a pregnancy on their own terms, with deference to their own religious beliefs,” the group said.
“This law clearly places an undue burden on the religious practices of the Satanic Temple by interfering with burial rites,” Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves told Fox’s KTTV.
“To be clear, members of the Satanic Temple will not be made to pay for these punitive, superfluous and insulting burials,” Greaves said.
“We claim exemption on religious-liberty grounds, and we will almost certainly prevail in the courts if we are forced to fight.”
The Satanic Temple’s response comes as the Supreme Court reinstated an Indiana law Tuesday requiring abortion clinics to cremate or bury fetal remains.
The Supreme Court justices declined to review the second provision of the Indiana law banning discriminatory abortions since the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said both provisions were unlawful. Vice President Mike Pence signed these abortion bans into law as governor. The Satanic Temple has publicly allied with Planned Parenthood and taken pro-choice stances in the past.
The group allied with Planned Parenthood in Missouri in 2017, again using the argument of religious liberty to protest against abortion restrictions. The groups protested a Missouri law requiring women seeking abortions to read pro-life literature and to wait 72 hours before aborting their unborn babies.
The Satanic Temple group also unsuccessfully attempted to have a statue of a “goat-headed, winged creature called Baphomet” installed outside state capitols in Arkansas and Oklahoma to counteract statues of the Ten Commandments, according to Fox News.
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