After receiving the medication, the process took a different turn. Via Zoom, a minister prompted Mikayla to look into a mirror to reflect on her own empowerment and recite: “One’s body is inviolable, subject only to one’s own will.” After taking the first pill of the two-drug regimen, Mikayla rattled off a principle about putting science first. The minister advised that after the pregnancy tissue was finally expelled, Mikayla could recite: “By my body, my blood. By my will, it is done.
Legal experts said some religious liberty lawsuits seeking abortion rights could succeed, given recent Supreme Court decisions that “upheld religious exemptions even in cases where there are really serious health and safety concerns,” he said. Elizabeth Reiner Platt, Director of Law, Rights and Religion. Project at Columbia University. Arguments in favor of exemptions could also be persuasive because most abortion bans have some exceptions, such as rape, experts said.
“These should be very strong and compelling cases, but I also recognize that this is a highly political issue,” Ms Platt said.
Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, who criticized the lawsuits, questioned the legal position of the plaintiffs, saying, “Many of these women are making forward-looking claims that one day they could be pregnant and one day, she might have this problem and that might require her to have an abortion.”
He said some plaintiffs might have religiously-sincere “extenuating individual circumstances,” but that allowing blanket exemptions could undermine the law’s broader purpose.
Whichever way the courts rule, it could be groundbreaking.
“We are in a whole new landscape,” said Ms. Platt.
adria malcolm contributed reporting from Albuquerque.
