ABORTION RIGHTS
Abortion Bans Infringe on Religious Freedom
Florida clergy suing to follow own faith on when life begins
Two Christians, three Jews, one Unitarian Universalist, and a Buddhist recently filed in a Florida court for a temporary injunction against the state’s 15-week abortion ban.
The ban, without exceptions for rape or incest, went into effect July 1 and does “immediate and irreparable injury” to their right to religious freedom, the clergy maintains. “It codifies a singular and exclusive religious belief with no plausible secular justification,” the lawsuit charged.
The Sept. 1 request to the 11th Judicial Circuit of Miami comes a month after the same clerics sued the state over the law in a lower court. Its argument has taken on new urgency after an appellate court recently rejected an injunction request by Planned Parenthood and other groups. The plaintiffs have appealed to the state Supreme Court.
This focus on religious liberty could eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ended a 50-year federal abortion right to allow states to set their own laws. Some court rulings also undermined the separation of church and state in favor of conservative Christian plaintiffs.
