Satanic Temple Says Supreme Court Ruling on Burial, Cremation of Aborted Babies Violates its Religious Beliefs

SALEM, Mass. — The Satanic Temple, an organization that identifies as non-theistic and says that it views Satan as a metaphor, has released a statement remarking that Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding an Indiana law that requires the burial or cremation of aborted babies violates its religious beliefs and its members “may refuse to adhere.”

“The Satanic Temple … has declared immunity for its members from the Indiana law requiring the cremation or burial of fetal remains that was allowed to stand by the U.S. Supreme Court,” it wrote.

“One of The Satanic Temple’s fundamental tenets is the inviolability of one’s body. Members of The Satanic Temple believe that non-viable fetal tissue is part of the woman who carries it, and as such, state impositions of ceremonial requirements requiring its disposal, barring any plausible medical or sanitary concerns, is a violation of TST’s Free Exercise [of religion],” the group stated.

As previously reported, on Tuesday, the nation’s highest court voted 7-2 to uphold an Indiana law that declassifies “fetal remains” from the definition of pathological waste and thereby prohibits the burning of aborted or miscarried babies in incinerators along with medical trash.

In doing so, it overturned a Seventh Circuit ruling that found that the State’s interest in the “humane and dignified disposal of human remains” was “not . . . legitimate.”

“This court has already acknowledged that a state has a ‘legitimate interest in proper disposal of fetal remains,’” the majority wrote, pointing back to a 1983 ruling. “The Seventh Circuit clearly erred in failing to recognize that interest as a permissible basis for Indiana’s disposition law.”

Justice Clarence Thomas similarly wrote in a separate concurring opinion, “I would have thought it could go without saying that nothing in the Constitution or any decision of this court prevents a state from requiring abortion facilities to provide for the respectful treatment of human remains.”

However, The Satanic Temple pointed to the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in asserting that the requirement places an “undue burden” on its religious practices.

“To be clear, members of The Satanic Temple will not pay for these punitive, superfluous, and insidious burials,” spokesman Doug Mesner, who goes by the name Lucien Greaves, said in a statement. “It would be profoundly hypocritical for any Church that advocates for religious rights not to support our claim.”

Customarily, if an abortion facility does not have a working relationship with a biomedical company or university, which use parts of the aborted children for research or sale, their remains are put into containers that are picked up by medical waste companies, which then incinerate the “pathological waste” together with other infectious waste, such as sharps, gloves, gowns and any other blood-soiled trash. The ash is then put on a landfill.

The nation’s most widely used medical waste company is Stericycle, which has repeatedly claimed that it does not accept fetal remains for disposal, but has been fined in several states for unlawfully dumping steam-treated aborted babies in landfills.

It was also documented in Grand Jury findings that Stericycle had serviced now-imprisoned Pennsylvania abortionist Kermit Gosnell, and the reason that incriminating evidence of babies with their necks snipped was found in Gosnell’s freezers by investigators is because he failed to pay his Stericycle bill.

See the photos of the babies as taken by investigators here and here.

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