Abortion bans violate religious freedom, clergy say in new legal campaign

[mahatmakanejeeves]

SOCIAL ISSUES

Abortion bans violate religious freedom, clergy say in new legal campaign

By Michelle Boorstein
Updated August 1, 2022 at 7:22 p.m. EDT | Published August 1, 2022 at 6:03 p.m. EDT



The Rev. Tom Capo of the Universalist Unitarian Association, who supports abortion rights, sits inside the chapel of his church in Miami. (Taimy Alvarez for The Washington Post)

When the Rev. Laurie Hafner ministers to her Florida congregants about abortion, she looks to the founding values of the United Church of Christ, her lifelong denomination: religious freedom and freedom of thought. She taps into her reading of Genesis, which says “man became a living being” when God breathed “the breath of life” into Adam. She thinks of Jesus promising believers full and abundant life. ... “I am pro-choice not in spite of my faith, but because of my faith,” Hafner says.

She is among seven Florida clergy members — two Christians, three Jews, one Unitarian Universalist and a Buddhist — who argue in separate lawsuits filed Monday that their ability to live and practice their religious faith is being violated by the state’s new, post-Roe abortion law. The law, which is one of the strictest in the country, making no exceptions for rape or incest, was signed in April by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), in a Pentecostal church alongside antiabortion lawmakers such as the House speaker, who called life “a gift from God.”

The lawsuits are at the vanguard of a novel legal strategy arguing that new post-Roe abortion restrictions violate Americans’ religious freedom, including that of clerics who advise pregnant people. The cases are part of an effort among a broad swath of religious Americans who support abortion access to rewrite the dominant modern cultural narrative that says the only “religious” view on abortion is to oppose it.



Coral Gables United Church of Christ Rev. Laurie Hafner. (Taimy Alvarez for The Washington Post)

“I think the religious right has had the resources and the voices politically and socially to be so loud, and frankly, they don’t represent the Christian faith,” Hafner told The Washington Post. “Those of us on the other side, with maybe a more inclusive voice, need to be strong and more faithful and say: ‘There is another very important voice.’

{snip}

By Michelle Boorstein
Michelle Boorstein has been a religion reporter since 2006. She has covered the shifting blend of religion and politics under four U.S. presidents, chronicled the rise of secularism in the United States, and broken financial and sexual scandals from the synagogue down the street to the Mormon Church in Utah to the Vatican. Twitter https://twitter.com/mboorstein

[CrispyQ]

1. They have allies in TX.

https://democraticunderground.com/100216991796

[Delphinus]

2. Yes!

So glad to see this.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Jewish Leaders: Banning Abortion is 'Absolutely' a Violation of Religious Freedom

Under Jewish religious law, it is clear that life begins at birth and there is no prohibition in the Torah on abortion. According to my Rabbi, the life of a fetus is only potential life and the life of the mother is more important than the life of a fetus. Alito's proposed opinion elevates Christian beliefs over Judaism.

Link to tweet

https://jezebel.com/jewish-leaders-banning-abortion-is-absolutely-a-violat-1848885645

Conservatives—namely, white evangelical Christians—have long weaponized religious values as a shoddy defense for their decades-long conquest to criminalize abortion in the United States. But after a leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade sent shockwaves through the public consciousness on Monday night, a different kind of group of religious text-swinging heroes has emerged.

Coalitions of Rabbis across different sects of Judaism and a contingent of Jewish abortion activists are defending Jewish pregnant people’s right to abortion access, raising what they claim is a valid legal challenge: A national abortion ban would violate their right to religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment. And as the right to bodily autonomy for women and pregnant people is threatened—largely impacting low-income Black and brown people—by conservative justices’ arguments that we should simply rewind to the good old years when women didn’t have any rights because, you know, some 17th century witch-hunter said so, Jewish communities are putting their foot down to say, “Not in my religion.”......

For evidence, Rabbi Ruttenberg points to the Book of Exodus in the Torah, which discusses a case where two men accidentally knock over a pregnant person and cause them to miscarry:

“When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other harm ensues, the one responsible shall be fined when the woman’s husband demands compensation; the payment will be determined by judges. But if other harm ensues, the penalty shall be life for life.”

The Hebrew Bible, she says, does not regard the fetus as a person, for the Torah doesn’t specify how long the woman has been pregnant when the miscarriage happens. Another annotated text states, “If she is found pregnant, until the fortieth day it is mere fluid,” meaning the fetus does not have agency for at least forty days of pregnancy. For that reason, some interpretations of Jewish law say that personhood begins with the first breath. “It’s not murder, basically, and the Talmud lays that out really explicitly,” she says.

I like the idea of a lawsuit filed on the basis of the First Amendment. Alito's draft opinion favors conservative christian theology over the faith all all or most Jews.