SOCIAL ISSUES

Abortion bans violate religious freedom, clergy say in new legal campaign

By Michelle Boorstein
Updated August 1, 2022 at 7:22 p.m. EDT | Published August 1, 2022 at 6:03 p.m. EDT



The Rev. Tom Capo of the Universalist Unitarian Association, who supports abortion rights, sits inside the chapel of his church in Miami. (Taimy Alvarez for The Washington Post)

When the Rev. Laurie Hafner ministers to her Florida congregants about abortion, she looks to the founding values of the United Church of Christ, her lifelong denomination: religious freedom and freedom of thought. She taps into her reading of Genesis, which says “man became a living being” when God breathed “the breath of life” into Adam. She thinks of Jesus promising believers full and abundant life. ... “I am pro-choice not in spite of my faith, but because of my faith,” Hafner says.

She is among seven Florida clergy members — two Christians, three Jews, one Unitarian Universalist and a Buddhist — who argue in separate lawsuits filed Monday that their ability to live and practice their religious faith is being violated by the state’s new, post-Roe abortion law. The law, which is one of the strictest in the country, making no exceptions for rape or incest, was signed in April by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), in a Pentecostal church alongside antiabortion lawmakers such as the House speaker, who called life “a gift from God.”

The lawsuits are at the vanguard of a novel legal strategy arguing that new post-Roe abortion restrictions violate Americans’ religious freedom, including that of clerics who advise pregnant people. The cases are part of an effort among a broad swath of religious Americans who support abortion access to rewrite the dominant modern cultural narrative that says the only “religious” view on abortion is to oppose it.



Coral Gables United Church of Christ Rev. Laurie Hafner. (Taimy Alvarez for The Washington Post)

“I think the religious right has had the resources and the voices politically and socially to be so loud, and frankly, they don’t represent the Christian faith,” Hafner told The Washington Post. “Those of us on the other side, with maybe a more inclusive voice, need to be strong and more faithful and say: ‘There is another very important voice.’

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By Michelle Boorstein
Michelle Boorstein has been a religion reporter since 2006. She has covered the shifting blend of religion and politics under four U.S. presidents, chronicled the rise of secularism in the United States, and broken financial and sexual scandals from the synagogue down the street to the Mormon Church in Utah to the Vatican. Twitter https://twitter.com/mboorstein