Responding to Pro-abortion Arguments: Can Abortion Be a Religious Right?

So what happens when that right supposedly clashes with the right to freedom of religious belief and expression?

What Is TST?

The Satanic Temple (TST) is currently suing the state of Indiana, whose current laws only allow abortion in cases of rape, incest, and protecting the mother’s life, over this lack of access to abortion, claiming it violates their religious freedom. This isn’t the first time TST has sued a state over abortion laws (e.g., litigation in Texas).

What is TST? It’s a religious organization with a heavy focus on abortion and so-called “reproductive rights.” They reject the supernatural and don’t really believe in Satan but rather see him as a symbol of rebellion against “arbitrary authority” and “an icon for the unbowed will of the unsilenced inquirer – the heretic who questions sacred laws and rejects all tyrannical impositions.” Really, it’s just an attention-grabbing form of secular humanism.

On its website, TST claims to be “the leading beacon of light in the battle for abortion access” because “we are the only entity that can assert a religious liberty claim that terminating a pregnancy is a central part of a religious ritual that encourages self-empowerment and affirms bodily autonomy.” In other words, they’re hoping their supposed religious right will trump the right to life for unborn babies.

Unlimited Religious Liberty?

But is this a good argument?

Well, we understand that no right is 100% inviolable. Even the most fundamental—the right to life—can be forfeited in certain states if you murder someone and are handed the death penalty by the judge. The government recognizes the rights of parents to discipline their children, but this doesn’t mean they allow parents to mistreat or abuse their children. The US believes in religious freedom but doesn’t allow certain Muslim sects to practice all of their beliefs here in America because their religious practices include unjustly and harshly punishing violations of religious belief.

There should be careful and thoughtful limits put on rights for the protection of people. (For the biblical principle of the government existing to reward the good and punish evildoers, see Romans 13.)

Of course, no government does this perfectly, and we’re increasingly seeing good and evil redefined so religious liberty and other rights can be radically restricted (mostly just for Christians).

What about the TST claim that their religious rights are violated when abortion is restricted? Every successful abortion ends a human life. A person is killed. The United States does not allow any religious group to kill a person (or have someone else kill a person on their behalf) as a “religious ritual.”

Consider it this way. What if TST believed their female members have a religious right to kill their newborns? Would their religious liberty trump the baby’s right to life? Of course not. And it is no different for a baby in the womb—that child has a right to life, and we should not allow someone to kill that child for any reason, even a supposedly religious one.

A Woman’s Body—Inviolable?

How can TST claim the taking of a tiny human life is a “religious ritual”? In their tenets of belief, they claim, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,” and therefore they “hold the religious belief that an unwanted zygote, blastocyst, embryo, or nonviable fetus should be removed from the body of a pregnant woman.”

Of course, this is inconsistent. If they truly believe that “one’s body is inviolable,” then they would respect the body of the unborn child and that child’s innate will to live, and they would not want to violently rip that child apart in his or her mother’s womb.

Furthermore, TST believes that an unborn child is “not imbued with an existence, humanity, or spiritual life separate and apart from the mother.” They can believe that—they have the freedom to believe whatever they want—but they do not have the freedom to murder someone else because of what they believe.

But the belief that an unborn child doesn’t have “existence, humanity, or spiritual life separate and apart from the mother” is nonsense. From a scientific standpoint, a human life begins (exists) when a human egg in the mother’s body is fertilized by a human sperm from the father’s body (this can also happen in a petri dish in some reproductive technologies). If the combination of human DNA (half from the mother, half from the father) doesn’t result in “humanity,” what does it result in? It’s 100% human DNA; therefore, the offspring can’t be anything but part of “humanity.” The level of dependency on the mother doesn’t make an unborn child nonhuman or nonexistent!

This is akin to saying that people who are dependent on a machine or a lifesaving medication to keep them alive do not have “existence, humanity, or spiritual life separate and apart from” that machine or medication. After all, without it, they too would die (and wouldn’t we all die “separate and apart from” food, water, etc.?). But, of course, these people are fully human and exist even though their lives are currently dependent on something outside of themselves.

But perhaps TST means existence and humanity in the same sense as “spiritual life”—i.e., personhood. They don’t believe the unborn are persons. Again, they can believe that if they choose, but that doesn’t make it their right to kill someone else.

This is a good reminder of why the question “When does life begin?” isn’t ultimately a scientific question. Science can tell us when life begins, but it doesn’t tell us when a person is a person. That question has been answered by God in his Word: Right at the moment of fertilization (see Genesis 1:27; Psalm 139; Jeremiah 1:5).

Don’t Distort the Science

Another relevant tenant of TST is that “beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.”

Again, TST is very inconsistent in this belief. In their lawsuit they claim to also believe that “a zygote, blastocyst, embryo, and nonviable fetus are a part of a woman’s body.” Scientifically, this is nonsense, so they are not abiding by their belief about being careful to ensure they don’t distort facts to fit their beliefs!

An unborn child is not part of the woman’s body. That child has DNA that is distinct from the mother’s (half from mom, half from dad); therefore, that person is a unique individual with DNA instructions that will build his or her unique body inside the mother’s womb. If someone truly wants to believe an unborn baby is just part of the mother’s body, then a pregnant woman has two heads, four arms, twenty toes, and—if her unborn child is a boy—male chromosomes and genitals! And, of course, if she’s carrying multiples, suddenly she has three or four heads and half a dozen legs (some of which she can’t control but certainly like to move on their own!).

And what if her unborn child has an in utero surgery? The woman had surgery on “her” heart or lungs but doesn’t feel any of it except the incision from where they cut her open to tend to her child. It’s nonsense!

Furthermore, an unborn baby implants in the woman’s uterus via the first organ, the placenta. This disk-shaped organ implants itself into the rich lining of the uterus and—in a process that scientists still don’t fully understand—shuts off the mom’s immune system response (without actually shutting down the immune system itself) so that her body doesn’t reject the baby as foreign. This wouldn’t be necessary if the baby were just part of her body. Indeed, mom and baby are so distinct that, while baby relies on mom for oxygen, food, waste removal, various hormones, and more, their blood never comes in contact! The placenta serves as a barrier keeping the two separate while allowing for the diffusion and flow of gases, nutrients, wastes, and hormones.

In holding to the worn-out notion that an unborn child is just part of the mother’s body, TST rejects science and distorts it to fit with their preconceived beliefs—something they claim they believe you shouldn’t do!

God Holds the Right to Life

God alone holds the right to give and take life because he is the ultimate Giver of life.

As much as they’d like to believe they do, TST does not have a religious right to murder unborn children. No one has that right (regardless of what the laws in our states say). God alone holds the right to give and take life because he is the ultimate Giver of life.

TST is nothing more than a man-made religion that, like its master, Satan (whether the members truly believe in him or not), peddles lies and violence to appease its members’ sinful, selfish flesh. All members of TST need to repent of their sin and turn to Christ. Unlike their hopeless religion of rebelling against authority and just doing “good,” Christ offers forgiveness for sin, the hope of eternal life, and peace with God to all who will repent and believe. We pray these precious people, made in God’s image, will turn from their sin and trust in Christ alone.