Jack Wolfsohn | Writer
September 30, 2021
The recent Texas abortion law that bans abortion after 6 weeks gives a woman an extremely short amount of time to get an abortion and/or discover they are pregnant. The controversial law divided the nation, and there have been ongoing arguments from both sides. Since the law is also enforced by citizens (someone who believes a person got an abortion can tell the police and they will arrest the suspect), there have been websites created specifically for submission of a person’s name for the police to conduct further investigation.
Those in opposition of the law have gone as far as to write coding that would encourage fake user data and flood the websites so that even if a real person is reported, their name will be hidden under the mess of fake names and identities. However, nothing compares to the recently discovered loophole called The Satanic Temple.
The Satanic Temple!? Doesn’t sound like the right answer, right? But its purpose is a lot more convincing than its name.
First off, it’s a church, not a cult. It’s legally recognized as a church by the IRS, meaning that it’s tax-exempt, but The Satanic Temple describes itself as a “nontheistic church.” Not only that, The Satanic Temple also doesn’t even believe “in the existence of Satan” or anything supernatural because it goes against their beliefs of “being malleable to the best current scientific understanding of the material world” (thesatanictemple.com).
The Satanic Temple was originally a human rights group that wanted to be recognized as a church by law, in order to specifically enable its members to exploit the same loopholes that other religious organizations receive.
The most important aspect of The Satanic Temple is that it’s recognized as a church by law and not a cult. This means that their beliefs cannot be infringed upon by the government, and any laws that do would be considered unconstitutional-1st amendment, freedom of religion. If one were to look up The Satanic Temple in Google and click on the first link, they’d find the “Seven Fundamental Tenets” of The Satanic Temple. The third tenet reads, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,” and they consider banning abortion to be in violation of this proclamation.
The Satanic Temple sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demanding to allow its members to have access to abortion pills, stating that the pills are necessary to be used in a “sacramental setting.” If the abortion pills are not given to The Satanic Temple members in Texas, it would be unconstitutional since the government would be prohibiting the free practice of religion in America.
“The Satanic Temple is helping with women’s rights? That’s kinda odd,” junior Wylder Groves said. “Well I guess it doesn’t matter who is supporting, but their argument sounds pretty good, hopefully it works.”
“People seriously have to claim to join or temporarily join a whole religion just to get to decide what they want to do,” said Junior Andrew Perez. “At least the Satanic Temple doesn’t sound bad, you probably just fill out a form online to join or something.”
With the support of religious groups on both sides, a person has the ability to utilize constitutional laws protecting religious freedom in order to obtain an abortion.
To be clear, there’s still hundreds, if not more, court cases that need to be started before The Satanic Temple has a chance to fight for their beliefs, but it’s a very important loophole that every woman in Texas should be aware of before aborting their child illegally.
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