ST. LOUIS — A challenge to Missouri’s abortion law took place Wednesday morning in a St. Louis courtroom.
The lawsuit is filed by a group of religious leaders who support abortion rights. The group of 13 Jewish, Christian and Unitarian Universalist leaders alleges that lawmakers openly invoked their religious beliefs while drafting Missouri’s abortion ban and thereby imposed those beliefs on others who don’t share them.
The lawsuit is the latest of many to challenge restrictive abortion laws enacted by conservative states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of last year.
The judge in the case took arguments from both sides under advisement and adjourned so he could decide on the matter.
That landmark ruling left abortion rights up to each state to decide.
Within minutes of that Supreme Court decision, then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Gov. Mike Parson, both Republicans, filed paperwork to immediately enact a 2019 law prohibiting abortions “except in cases of medical emergency.”
That law contained a provision making it effective only if Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Since then, religious abortion rights supporters have increasingly used religious freedom lawsuits in seeking to protect abortion access.
The court hearing Wednesday seeks a permanent injunction barring the state from enforcing its abortion law and a declaration that provisions of its law violate the Missouri Constitution. The religious freedom complaints are among nearly three dozen post-Roe lawsuits that have been filed against 19 states’ abortion bans, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
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