The Planned Parenthood on Forest Park Avenue
Update, 2 p.m.: This story has been updated with comment from Satanic Temple spokesperson and founder Lucien Greaves.
A judge has thrown out a federal lawsuit filed by the Satanic Temple on behalf of a woman claiming that Missouri’s strict abortion rules, including a 72-hour waiting period, violate her religious freedoms.
U.S. District Judge Henry Edward Autrey dismissed the case because the woman, known as Mary Doe, is no longer pregnant, according to court documents. The ruling comes more than a year after the Satanic Temple filed the case—and well after Doe would have given birth.
“Plaintiff Doe is not now pregnant, there is no guaranty that she will become pregnant in the future, and that if she does, she will seek an abortion, thus, Plaintiffs' injuries are not sufficiently concrete for the Court to order the requested relief,” Autrey writes in the decision. “Because Plaintiffs have failed [to] allege a threatened injury that is certainly impending and that any future injury is particular and concrete, Plaintiffs have failed to sufficiently establish standing to challenge the Missouri statutes.”
See also: Missouri Firearms Bill Would Make Guns As Difficult to Access As Abortions
The ruling doesn’t address a fundamental question of the case—whether Missouri’s abortion rules violate religious freedoms. The temple plans to appeal the decision, spokesperson and co-founder Lucien Greaves, whose legal name is Doug Mesner, tells SLM.
“He didn’t address the First Amendment issue at all,” Greaves says, calling the judge’s ruling “speculative” and “rather smartass” because “obviously, you’re not going to find a federal case that is wrapped up in nine months.”
Missouri has only one functioning abortion clinic, the Planned Parenthood in the Central West End. State law requires women seeking an abortion to read a state-sponsored booklet that says “life begins at conception,” that a fetus is “a separate, unique, living human being,” and offers women the opportunity to see the fetus via ultrasound and hear the heartbeat. Women must wait 72 hours after reading the literature before accessing an abortion.
Doe and the Satanic Temple argue that these requirements violate their religious freedoms by forcing them to read and adhere to beliefs they do not share, including the belief that life begins at conception and that abortion terminates a “separate, unique, living human being.” The Satanic Temple notes that women have safe abortions in other states without the requirements Missouri enforces.
Satanists “believe human tissue can be removed from their bodies on demand and, in good conscience, without regard to the current or future condition of the human tissue,” according to the judge’s ruling.
In May 2015, Doe told the Riverfront Times she was a 22-year-old mechanic living in southwest Missouri who couldn’t afford to take multiple four-hour trips to St. Louis to access an abortion while satisfying Missouri’s 72-hour wait time. When she presented Planned Parenthood with a letter stating she objected to state abortion requirements, the clinic declined to give her an abortion, stating it must follow the law.
"I know that there are people who have opposite views of what myself and the Satanic Temple have, but I think if they really took a good look at how difficult they were making it for women to get this procedure they need, they would see it's really against their own principles," Doe told the RFT in May 2015. "I'm hoping there can be progress made changing the laws as they are right now."
Read the judge’s decision below:
h/t: Broadly
Contact Lindsay Toler by email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
