Saturday, August 06, 2022

ANS -- Clerics sue over Florida abortion law, saying it violates religious freedom

So, it is finally happening -- someone is pointing out, in court, that going with the Catholic and Evangelical ideas about abortion and ignoring all the other religions is religious discrimination.  It's about time.  We will see what becomes of it.  
this article is a bit long -- the gaps are where ads were, so keep scrolling...
--Kim



Clerics sue over Florida abortion law, saying it violates religious freedom

Image without a caption
By Michelle Boorstein
Updated August 2, 2022 at 1:50 p.m. EDT|Published August 1, 2022 at 6:03 p.m. EDT
The Rev. Tom Capo of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami, in the sanctuary. (Taimy Alvarez for The Washington Post)
CORRECTION

In an earlier version of this story, a caption misidentified the Rev. Tom Capo's affiliation. He is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association. The story has been updated.

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 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.

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

"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.'

"Look biblically; Jesus says nothing about abortion. He talks about loving your neighbor and living abundantly and fully. He says: 'I come that you might have full life.' Does that mean for a 10-year-old to bear the child of her molester? That you cut your life short because you aren't able to rid your body of a fetus?"

Antiabortion advocate worked for years to overturn Roe, but worries over next steps

The five lawsuits seek to invalidate the Florida law, which went info effect July 1 and bans abortions after 15 weeks, except in cases where the mother could face serious injury or death, or if the fetus has a fatal abnormality. It also makes it a felony to "participate" in an abortion, which the suits charge could include counseling someone to have one.

"Since time immemorial, the questions of when a potential fetus or fetus becomes a life and how to value maternal life during pregnancy have been answered according to religious beliefs and creeds," say the suits, which use identical language except when describing each plaintiff's faith.

The new law, the suits read, sets "a pernicious elevation of the legal rights of fetuses while at the same time it devalues the quality of life and the health of the woman or girl who is pregnant. It is in direct conflict with Plaintiff's clerical obligations and faith and imposes severe barriers and substantial burdens to their religious belief, speech and conduct."

The cases are unusual in that they frame major liberal values through the lens of religious-liberty law. For years, religious conservatives have successfully argued in high-profile Supreme Court cases that their beliefs should allow them to open churches during a global pandemic, discriminate against LGBTQ people and decline to give employees contraception, among other cases.

A lawsuit similar to the clergy members' was filed in June by a Florida rabbi, who argued the abortion law violates his practice of Judaism. Jewish views on abortion are complex across the ideological spectrum, but law and tradition do not ban it, sometimes appear to require it and do not recognize an unborn fetus as a full, legal person. According to that lawsuit, filed last month in Leon County Circuit Court, Congregation L'Dor Va-Dor of Boynton Beach argues that the new law "prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and … violates their privacy rights and religious freedom."

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