(JTA) – A Missouri judge upheld the state’s abortion ban Friday, rejecting efforts by a group of 14 interfaith clergy, including rabbis, who sought to protect reproductive rights by suing the state on religious freedom grounds.

The faith leaders, among them five rabbis from multiple Jewish denominations, filed their suit in January 2023. They charged that lawmakers who voted to ban nearly all abortions acted according to their personal religious beliefs, violating the separation of church and state enshrined in Missouri’s constitution.

The so-called “trigger bill” went into effect after the Supreme Court removed federal abortion protections in 2022 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. 

In his decision on Friday upholding Missouri’s ban, St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Jason Sengheiser argued that the language of the state’s abortion law is “similar” to the language of the state constitution, which also includes language like “Supreme Ruler of the Universe” and “Almighty God.” 

Sengheiser also noted that the bill paraphrases language famously found in the Declaration of Independence stating that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life.”

The petitioners had argued in their lawsuit that the bill established its own religion. But Sengheiser wrote that the main argument of abortion opponents is not exclusively a religious belief. 

‘Human life begins at conception’

“The Court does not accept Petitioners’ argument that the determination that human life begins at conception is strictly a religious one,” Sengheiser wrote. “While the determination that life begins at conception may run counter to some religious beliefs it is not itself necessarily a religious belief.”

In a statement issued Friday, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, speaking on behalf of the clergy members, said they “respectfully” disagreed with the judge’s decision and would be discussing next steps with the faith leaders.

“Missouri’s abortion ban is a direct attack on the separation of church and state, religious freedom and reproductive freedom,” Americans United said in their statement. “Missouri lawmakers made clear that they were imposing their personal religious beliefs on all Missourians when they enacted these laws.”

Jewish clergy nationwide – in Florida, Indiana and Kentucky as well as Missouri – have been fighting in court for reproductive rights since the Dobbs decision. Many have cited alleged religious freedom violations. An Indiana Court of Appeals ruled in April that the state’s religious liberty protections may extend to those seeking an abortion, but the case will likely go to the state Supreme Court for a final ruling.

Sengheiser’s decision was made the day after the US Supreme Court voted in favor of protecting federal access to medication abortion. 

After months of trying, the State Auditor’s Office has served a subpoena to former St. Louis prosecuting attorney Kim Gardner. The subpoena is in relation to an ongoing state audit of her administration that began under former State Auditor Nicole Galloway.

Gardner resigned last year after heaping caseloads, heavy staffing turnover, and a teenage athlete losing both legs in a St. Louis traffic crash by an armed robbery suspect who violated bond many times.

State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said his office has met with Gardner to finish the interview phase of the audit.

“That’s a big development for us,” Fitzpatrick told Missourinet. “It’s something that needed to happen, really for us to try to complete the field work in this audit that’s been going on since June of 2021. And now that that is done, we’re moving on to analyzing all the information we have so that we can begin drafting the report and try to get this thing wrapped up.”

According to Fitzpatrick his office served a subpoena to St. Louis University for records about Gardner’s nursing school schedule and another subpoena intended for her.

“There’s a requirement in law that she, you know, that the circuit attorney in St Louis, spend their full time or dedicate their full time and efforts to the job of circuit attorney. And so, the concern was, if she was attending nursing school classes and clinicals during the times that she would otherwise be working, that she was potentially in violation of that,” he said.

Fitzpatrick said he hopes to have the audit wrapped up this year.

“We don’t anticipate needing to speak with her again,” he said. “At this point, we have all the records from (the) circuit attorney’s office that we have asked for. We’ve been able to speak with everybody we want to speak with.”

Gardner served as St. Louis Circuit Attorney from 2017 to 2023.

Copyright © 2024 · Missourinet

Posted on June 17, 2024 |

3

‘When Josh Hawley calls himself pro-worker, he doesn’t mean us’

By TIM ROWDEN
Editor-in-Chief

Independence, MO – A group of Missouri tradeswomen have penned an open letter slamming Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) for defending Harrison Butker, who told recent college graduates that American women should embrace traditional homemaking roles.

“When Harrison Butker told a group of young college graduates that working women like us have fallen for ‘diabolical lies’ by providing for our families, Senator Josh Hawley had a chance to stand up for us and for our freedom,” the tradeswomen wrote in the letter. “Instead, Hawley showed us his true colors by defending that message.”

The letter was signed by 55 Missouri tradeswomen – representing carpenters, electricians, ironworkers, auto workers, tile setters, machinists, painters, operating engineers, retail clerks and others.

In his speech at Benedictine College in Kansas last month, Butker told students: “I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you.

“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.”

Butker also said his wife embraced “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”

Hawley’s own wife, Erin Hawley, is a prominent anti-abortion lawyer.

Amid heated controversy over Butker’s remarks, Hawley told Spectrum News: “I’m not going to go in for all of this lefty garbage and I just thought that his calls for folks to stand up and be bold was great.”

MISSOURI’S TRADESWOMEN
Missouri’s tradeswomen are having none of it.

“We are Missouri’s tradeswomen. We’re the women who are building America. But whether we provide for our family by working on a job site or by taking care of our home, what’s most important in America is that we get the freedom to choose. Because in this country, no one gets to tell us how to live,” the tradeswomen said in the letter.

The letter goes on to state:

“It’d be one thing if it was just a speech, because at the end of the day, Harrison Butker has a right to say and believe what he wants. But the problem for us is this — Josh Hawley has taken this obsession with controlling how women live to elected office. Hawley voted against the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. He’s attacked No-Fault Divorce laws. He cut overtime pay for more than 200,000 Missouri workers, including women who provide their families’ only source of income. And he’s led the charge to take away the freedom to choose how we build our families and what we do with our bodies.

“Hawley has made it clear that he thinks it takes courage for a pair of millionaires to tell young women that most of them should be homemakers instead of choosing to follow their own dreams — and that somehow the condemnation of that message makes that pair the victims. That’s not surprising, since he also thinks it’s courageous for a millionaire politician to say things like ‘home is a promise given to a husband, made possible only by a wife’ and that it’s the ‘man’s job is to provide for his family’ in a book (he wrote)  titled ‘Manhood.’

“When Josh Hawley calls himself ‘pro-worker,’  he doesn’t mean us — working women. He thinks it’s his job to tell us how to live. It isn’t. His job is to protect our freedom and invest in our communities so we can raise our families as we see fit.

“So our advice to Josh is this: You start doing your job. We’ll keep doing ours.”

STARK CONTRAST
Hawley is being challenged in his re-election bid by Democrat Lucas Kunce, a 13-year Marine veteran, national security expert and anti-trust advocate, whose own wife, Marilyn, helped organize her workplace under the CWA umbrella and was nominated to work on the Organizing Committee.

“I’m really proud of that because it’s huge for our family, it’s huge for her workplace,” Kunce said at a fundraiser in February. “It’s a part of our movement that we have in our country right now that honestly kind surprises me: that people have finally realized that the only way everyday Missourians and everyday Americans are going to have power again is through organizing and Organized Labor.”