Hail Satan! in Salt Lake City, Utah
Happily, there is some progressive activities through The Satanic Temple. A group that I like much. They conducted a successful fundraising campaigning for raising awareness about reproductive rights.
This will result in a Religious Reproductive Rights Campaign in the spring in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 11 United States states, there is work to restrict or prohibit access to abortion for women. A fundamental human right of women as human beings, as women.
There were over 300 bills passed in 2019, which marks a distinct effort to limit the full practice of this right, thus the autonomy of women. These life-changing choices deserve respect — efforts to restrict them deserve due condemnation as violations of human rights and called out as attempts to violate the rights of women.
The Satanic Temple stated, these bills “make unreasonable demands on patients and practitioners that endanger the health, safety, or wellbeing of our members and others who share our convictions.”
The Satanic Temple exists as a formal religion — as far as I know — in the United States with specific faith tenets. The Third is “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone” and the Fifth is “beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.” Both the Third and the Fifth tenets of The Satanic Temple become issues here.
In that, if the body is inviolable and subject to one's own will, and if the best scientific understanding stipulates the status of the zygote, blastocyst, and fetus in the body of a woman prior to birth of a baby, an infant, then the 300+ bills aimed at the restriction of the rights of women over their body becomes an explicit violation of sincerely held religious beliefs oriented around scientific modernity and the autonomy of the individual body of the woman.
“These laws are a blatant attempt to force theocratic beliefs into US law and dictate what people can and cannot do with their bodies,” The Satanic Temple stated, “These laws intentionally misrepresent scientific research and use inaccurate information, such as non-existent “fetal heartbeats”, to play upon people’s emotions.”
With federal recognition as a religion, these beliefs become protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The RFRA is from 1993 and is for the prohibition of the federal government and the states from “substantially burden[ing] a person’s exercise of religion,” except in the case of the “application of the burden…is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering that…interest.”
The Satanic Temple continues its litigation with the state of Missouri. Other states violating the rights of women and others; The Satanic Temple may continue to fight for them into the indefinite future, which remains a notable and noble pursuit of justice for others and the fairness, justice, and equality desired by most citizens of the United States, presumably.
As a federally recognized religion, the right to practice our beliefs is protected under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. We are already in litigation with the state of Missouri, and we have plans in other states to continue this fight.
“The rally will include notable experts and activists and will be a positive gathering of like-minded Satanists and supporters,” The Satanic Temple concluded, “Following the rally, TST will hold a Celebration of Bodily Autonomy. This informal gathering will include entertainment and information on TST’s Religious Reproductive Rights campaign as well as information on how you can become more involved.”
