Missouri has reportedly doubled its abortion capacity this year “thanks to the Satanic Temple and Planned Parenthood,” who have worked in tandem to fight the state’s restrictions on abortion.

With some of the most clearly defined regulations on abortion in the nation, Missouri had managed to lower the number of abortion facilities to a single clinic, but a second Missouri clinic opened its doors recently and two others plan on following soon.

Planned Parenthood has battled against state regulations requiring abortion clinics to meet the same surgical center standards as full hospitals and for their doctors to have hospital privileges, and in April a federal court sided with the abortion giant.

U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs granted a preliminary injunction invalidating requirements for the state’s abortion clinics to meet standards for surgical centers and for their doctors to have hospital privileges, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling striking down similar restrictions in Texas, which deemed those laws unnecessary and unconstitutional.

“Missouri has not complied with that decision,” Sachs, of the Western District of Missouri in Kansas City, wrote.

Shortly afterward, Planned Parenthood expressed its intention to expand its abortion services in the state. On Monday, Planned Parenthood Great Plains announced plans to offer abortion services at two more clinics in Missouri, including its midtown Kansas City clinic, which now offers medication abortion services.

The Satanic Temple has often lent its muscle to pro-abortion efforts alongside Planned Parenthood, and in this case has pressured Missouri legislators and worked through the courts to bring about a relaxing of abortion restrictions, according to reports. One of the Temple’s fundamental tenets is that “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”

On Monday, the Satanic Temple argued in a Missouri court that the state’s abortion restrictions violate members’ rights to free religious practice. The organization challenged two Missouri laws: one that requires patients to look at anti-abortion literature and another that obliges them to wait 72 hours between their initial consultations and second appointments for their abortions.

Satanic Temple members have argued that their religion prizes rational, independent thought and that forcing Satanists to read anti-abortion pamphlets and “consider a religious proposition with which they do not agree” during the 72-hour waiting period constitutes a violation of their beliefs.

For years the Satanic Temple has been involved with lawsuits in Missouri fighting abortion regulations. The group also attempted to procure a religious waiver for a female Satanist who sought to circumvent the 72-hour requirement under pretense that it violated her religion. A judge eventually threw out the case because the woman was no longer pregnant.

The Satanic Temple has been on the forefront of the fight to protect and extend abortion rights throughout the nation, and in 2015 set up a crowdfunding website with Indiegogo “to challenge arbitrary, insulting abortion regulations,” especially the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

Its website states:

The Satanic Temple (TST) supports personal choice in the context of abortion and, as part of a multi-faceted Women’s Rights campaign, TST is offering religious exemptions from arbitrary, insulting, and outright harmful anti-abortion legislation that has been steadily encroaching across the nation.

As an interesting aside, Satanism has a millennial history of association with child sacrifice, which makes the Temple’s financial and moral support of abortion a natural activity for the sect. The Israelites struggled against the worship of Baal, another name for the Phoenician god Moloch, who demanded child sacrifices of his followers and was associated with the devil. The prophet Jeremiah spoke explicitly of the sacrifice of children to Baal, warning his readers that God finds such behavior abhorrent.

Baal was often identified with Satan, especially in the form of “Beezebul” (Lord Baal), the prince of demons, which literally meant the “Lord of the Flies.” Jesus Christ was accused of obtaining powers for his miracles from “Beelzebul,” whom he identified as Satan.

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