What About Me?

I don’t believe in organized religions but I have my own personal religious beliefs do they count?

Religious Freedom Arguments Underpin Wave of Challenges to Abortion Bans

In lawsuits challenging state abortion bans, lawyers for abortion rights plaintiffs are employing religious liberty arguments the Christian right has used for decades.

New York Times

By Pam Belluck

June 28, 2023

For years, conservative Christians have used the principle of religious freedom to prevail in legal battles on issues like contraceptive insurance mandates and pandemic restrictions. Now, abortion rights supporters are employing that argument to challenge one of the right’s most prized accomplishments: state bans on abortion.

In the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, clergy and members of various religions, including Christian and Jewish denominations, have filed about 15 lawsuits in eight states, saying abortion bans and restrictions infringe on their faiths.

Many of those suing say that according to their religious beliefs, abortion should be allowed in at least some circumstances that the bans prohibit, and that the bans violate religious liberty guarantees and the separation of church and state. The suits, some seeking exemptions and others seeking to overturn the bans, often invoke state religious freedom restoration acts enacted and used by conservatives in some battles over social issues.

The lawsuits show “religious liberty doesn’t operate in one direction,” said Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at University of Texas at Austin.

What about me? Does my beliefs count?

Some belief systems, including the United Church of Christ’s, support women making their own decisions in pregnancy. Some, including the Episcopal Church and many branches of Judaism have traditions that abortion should be supported in certain cases, especially where pregnancies threaten women’s physical or mental health or involve serious fetal abnormalities. Some faiths do not define life as beginning with conception.

The Indiana case was filed by Hoosier Jews for Choice, three Jewish women and a woman with independent spiritual beliefs. Judge Heather Welch of Marion County Superior Court has certified it as a class-action lawsuit on behalf of “all persons in Indiana whose religious beliefs direct them to obtain abortions in situations prohibited by” the ban.

It looks like one person has filed that it is against her personal beliefs.

Of course the Republicans only believe that their religious views only count.

The state has appealed, arguing that “‘abortion access’ is not religious exercise.” Like other states fighting such lawsuits, Indiana said it has a “compelling interest” to prohibit abortions.

“Plaintiffs identify no principle that makes abortion a religious act any more than countless other actions that they believe to affect their well-being,” Indiana’s attorney general wrote, adding, “Other acceptable means for plaintiffs to achieve such ends in the context of childbearing include sexual abstinence, contraceptives, IUDs and natural family planning, just to name a few.”

Gee they want it both ways!

They get up on the legislative floor arguing that it is against god and then in court argue that it is not religiously based.

The article didn’t address my concern, can a woman with independent spiritual beliefs also claim that the law violates her religious beliefs or do that have to be a member of an organized religion? If that have to be a member of an organized religion doesn’t that in it self “establish” a religious test that the Constitution bans?