Group of faith leaders sue, challenging abortion law

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A lawsuit filed on behalf of several Missouri faith leaders on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision asks a court to throw out the state's abortion law, alleging that lawmakers openly invoked their personal religious beliefs in drafting the measure.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in St. Louis is the latest of many to challenge restrictive abortion laws enacted by conservative states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. That landmark ruling left abortion rights up to each state to decide.

Since then, religious abortion rights supporters have increasingly used religious freedom lawsuits in seeking to protect abortion access. 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.

The Missouri lawsuit seeks a permanent injunction barring the state from enforcing its abortion law and a declaration that provisions of its law violate the Missouri Constitution. Plaintiffs include 12 Christian and Jewish leaders.

"What the lawsuit says is that when you legislate your religious beliefs into law, you impose your beliefs on everyone else and force all of us to live by your own narrow beliefs," said Michelle Banker of the National Women's Law Center, lead attorney in the case. "And that hurts us. That denies our basic human rights."

Within minutes of last year's Supreme Court decision, thenAttorney 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.

The law makes it a felony punishable by 5 to 15 years in prison to perform or induce an abortion. Medical professionals who do so also could lose their licenses. The law says that women who undergo abortions cannot be prosecuted.