Reproductive health advocates fight to keep challenge of Missouri abortion ban alive

ST. LOUIS (CN) — Women’s reproductive rights advocates once again filled a St. Louis City courtroom Thursday as their lawyers argued to keep their lawsuit challenging Missouri’s abortion ban alive.

At the center of the argument was language in the ban calling the almighty God the author of life.

“Different religious groups have different beliefs about when life begins, and the term conception is a religious term that existed before science, even before people knew what fertilization was, and it was believed that male and female and God all came together to create a new life,” attorney K.M. Bell, of the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, argued during the hearing. “Obviously, the science advanced considerably since then.”

State’s attorney Maria Ann Lanahan attempted to poke holes in that reasoning. She said the wording has no effect on the law.

“If we got rid of that section, nothing will change,” Lanahan said. “The law would still be the same.”

Missouri’s motion for a judgment on the pleadings prompted the 70-minute hearing before Judge Jason Sengheiser. If successful, the motion would end a lawsuit filed by a group of clergy leaders this past January challenging Missouri’s abortion ban on religious grounds.

Solicitor General Joshua Divine told reporters after the hearing that the plaintiffs' logic would result in anarchy.

“Their whole idea is that if there's a law that some people happen to agree with on the basis of their religion, then the law must fall,” Divine said. “But if you have that, well, that's not a recipe for religious pluralism. That's a recipe for anarchy. You can't have robbery laws. You can't have theft laws. You can't have antidiscrimination laws under their theory. The Supreme Court rejected that six decades ago. They're trying to repackage it and resurrect it. We don't think it's going to work.”

But Kalli Joslin, a legal fellow at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said there is a difference between laws that coincide with religious beliefs and those that impose a particular religious belief.

“Those laws don't have the primary purpose or effect of imposing a ban on murder because of religion, unlike the laws challenged here, which have the primary purpose and effect of imposing religious beliefs about abortion and the beginning of human life on all Missourians,” Joslin told reporters after the hearing.

A theme during the hearing was the intent of legislators in Missouri’s GOP-dominated Legislature in passing the ban. The plaintiffs pointed out that numerous lawmakers mentioned personal religious beliefs in support of passage of the law.

“You can have whatever beliefs you want, you can vote based on those beliefs,” Bell told reporters after the hearing. “But what you can't do is impose those beliefs on everyone in the state.”

The plaintiffs pointed out that Jewish tradition, for example, does not hold that life begins at conception.

In her rebuttal for the state, Lanahan said conception and fertilization under Missouri law are essentially treated as the same thing.

“There are scientists out there who believe that life begins at conception,” Lanahan said during the hearing. “It may be bad science, but it’s science.”

Lanahan finished her argument by pointing out that a diverse amount of people share an anti-abortion opinion.

“They’re trying to say that the only reason a person can be pro-life is because they are religious,” Lanahan said. “That is obviously not true.”

Sengheiser told the parties to not expect a ruling from him until January.

“This requires a little bit of time because there is a lot of surrounding case law,” the judge said at the hearing’s conclusion.

Former Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November, made Missouri the first state to ban the medical procedure minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who succeeded Schmitt, along with Governor Michael Parson and several county prosecuting attorneys, are named as defendants in the lawsuit filed in St. Louis City Circuit Court.

The plaintiffs, 13 clergy members of multiple faiths and affiliations, claim the ban violates religious freedom and the state constitution’s promise of separation of church and state.

Schmitt based his legal opinion activating the abortion ban on a trigger provision contained in Section B of House Bill 126, which was passed in 2019. It allowed Missouri to outlaw abortion in the event the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade, which it did in 2022.

The ban makes performing an abortion a Class B felony. Medical providers who do so could lose their license.

The religious leaders claim the ban was passed on religious grounds, is causing a public health crisis, and especially hurts the most economically vulnerable who cannot afford to take time off work or get child care to cross state lines for an abortion.

The plaintiffs seek a permanent injunction prohibiting the state from enforcing the abortion ban.

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