There is no secret that avowed Satanists are vocal abortion activists. For years, members of the Satanic Temple have participated in anti-Life protests and filed spurious lawsuits against Pro-Life laws. The latest antics from the Satanic Temple include the invention of an “abortion ritual,” which the groups claims is a religious rite for Satanists. According to this sick position, the Satanic Temple claims that abortion on demand is a protected religious practice. In the illogic of abortion activists and Satanists, laws protecting individuals’ conscience rights and religious practices should be used to allow for the killing of preborn babies.
In an announcement about the supposed “rite,” the Satanic Temple claims that the “abortion ritual” consists of speaking Satanic tenets while looking into a mirror before and after undergoing an abortion. The Satanic Temple website states that the abortion ritual “sanctifies the abortion process by instilling confidence and protecting bodily rights.” Obviously, the abortion is a direct violation of the “bodily rights” of the preborn baby whose life is ended, but the Satanists ignore this. The tenets include egocentric affirmations such as, “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,” and “By my body, my blood. By my will it is done.”
According to the Satanic Temple, this “abortion ritual,” nowhere mentioned in all previous anti-Life lobbying, means that laws protecting religious practice now protect the killing of preborn babies. The Satanic Temple’s announcement states that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), “first trimester abortions are now exempt from unnecessary regulations for all individuals practicing The Satanic Temple’s religious abortion ritual.”
Those “unnecessary regulations” include Life-saving measures like waiting periods, informed consent, and ultrasounds, all of which give mothers the opportunity to see their children and learn about their development. Without these measures, the predatory abortion industry operates with impunity, dehumanizing preborn babies and taking money for ending the lives of children in the womb without obtaining informed consent.
Jane Essex, a spokeswoman for the Satanic Temple, told media, “Many states have laws that interfere with our members’ ability to practice their religious beliefs. No Christian would accept a mandatory waiting period before they can partake in Communion.” She continued, “No Christian would tolerate a law that insists state counseling is necessary before someone can be baptized. Our members are justly entitled to religious liberty in order to practice our rituals as well.” That is correct: according to the Satanic allies of the abortion lobby, killing a preborn child through the violence of abortion can be compared to receiving Communion and being baptized.
Claiming the abortion ritual is not just a ploy, sympathetic commentators described the ritual as a Satanic “destruction ritual.” Before you think Satanists acknowledge the preborn child with a beating heart whose life is ended violently in an abortion, they mean destruction ritual “in the sense that feelings of doubt and guilt are destroyed.” Indeed, even Satanists acknowledge that the decision to end the life of an innocent human being is one fraught with doubt, pain and regret. Part of the reason Satanists claim that they invented the “ritual” was because even they had to acknowledge mothers’ suffering following abortion.
Of course, while acknowledging the pain of abortion, Satanists fail to acknowledge the real reason for the pain and grief suffered by so many following an abortion decision. According to Satanists, this suffering is the result of “shame” and “stigma” induced by Pro-Life laws. The reality is that there is no ritual that can take away the abortion regret that haunts many mothers and fathers for years after an abortion decision. The pain of abortion is not because state legislators made the commonsense requirement to take steps to ensure informed consent. The pain of abortion follows from the senseless loss of human Life and the violence inflicted on an innocent person.
The Satanists’ attempt to make killing preborn children a protected religious rite demonstrates what is at stake in the fight for Life. Two fundamentally different world views are at work: one of death and one of Life; one of lies and one of Truth. Now more than ever, we must all be prepared to stand for Life and defend the innocent.