Pharmacists claimed their religious beliefs forbid them from filling prescriptions for birth control or abortion pills. But a new suit is making a very different kind of claim: Can doctors invoke religious liberty to provide care when the law bans it? I think they can. Via Slate:

South Carolina prohibits abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected—usually, six weeks after a patient’s last menstrual period, or about two weeks after an early pregnancy could possibly be detected. An almost identical statute was invalidated by the state Supreme Court, but then the court’s only female justice retired and was replaced by a man, creating the nation’s only all-male state Supreme Court. Those justices upheld the latest iteration of the state’s heartbeat ban, but that didn’t put an end to challenges to the law. One pending suit asks whether the state’s statute actually permits abortion until nine weeks rather than six.

A group of physicians have proposed a bolder challenge, arguing not only that the state’s law is too vague for doctors to understand but also that it violates their religious commitments to provide certain forms of care. The five plaintiffs have different faith backgrounds—they include Presbyterian, Jewish, and Lutheran doctors, as well as those with conscience commitments that fit less neatly in any single religious community.

The plaintiffs first make what has become a familiar argument since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade: South Carolina’s abortion ban may have abortion exceptions, but no one knows what they mean. For example, South Carolina’s law requires a “serious risk” of a “substantial and irreversible physical impairment,” but doesn’t say how serious an impairment must be—or how certain a doctor must be that a patient will suffer. This type of argument has become a cornerstone of reproductive rights strategy since Roe’s demise: Plaintiffs challenging state bans have spotlighted their contradictions and argued that they violate state constitutions.