The smutty fashion tabloid Cosmopolitan magazine is teaching its social-media followers how to perform their own “Satanic Abortion” ceremonies at home.
In a series of recent Instagram posts (here, here and here), the periodical has been promoting a telehealth clinic in New Mexico operated by The Satanic Temple, or TST.
Their facility is mockingly named the “Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic,” an affront to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice who authored the opinion overturning Roe v Wade.
The clinic provides mail-order abortion pills within state lines until the 11th week of pregnancy. It also delivers optional instructions for engaging in a satanic ceremony when self-administering the pills. The clinic does not offer surgical services.
Images in the Cosmo posts are blood red and bear marks of upside-down crosses and pentagrams along with sample ritual instructions. But the posts seem to be backfiring, as most comments are negative, such as one that reads: “Child sacrifice has been around for a long time. Now abortion is being exposed for what it truly is.”
When the satanic abortion clinic opened this past February, TST minister Chalice Blythe told Fox News that her organization’s goal is to expand into other states — including those with strict pro-life laws — by using the shield of protections enumerated in the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act:
Our plan is to make our services — the material support for the religious abortion ritual — to people in other states including the ones that have prohibitions. At that time we would definitely be utilizing our rights under RFRA to make that possible.
Cosmo brags that this maneuver “might just be the most genius reproductive justice play of our time.”
One of the many ironies of this story is that Cosmopolitan claims a mission “to empower young women” and “propel” them toward a “fun, fearless future.” However, what Cosmo and TST are actually doing is endangering women’s lives.
Dr. Christina Francis is president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and warned The New American about the danger that self-administered abortion pills pose to pregnant women who have ectopic pregnancies. This occurs when the fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the uterus — often in a fallopian tube. Without an in-clinic visit there is no way for a woman to know whether her pregnancy is ectopic. Ectopic pregnancies are one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the first trimester and occur in 1 in 50 women. Here’s what Dr. Francis said:
People giving them these pills have no way of knowing whether or not that pregnancy is in the uterus or not. And if they take these pills, 1. the pills don’t end and ectopic pregnancy. They’re not effective treatment for that. And 2. the symptoms of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy are exactly the same as the symptoms of a medication abortion – which are abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. So women are going to be losing precious minutes at home, thinking that these symptoms are perfectly normal, when, in fact, they’re rupturing their ectopic pregnancy, and if they don’t seek medical treatment immediately, they could die from this.
This is an extremely dangerous — and again, no matter where you stand on the issue of abortion, you should be opposed to this. This is frank medical malpractice and should not be being advocated for by any medical groups whatsoever.
Francis also noted that necessary screening for women with negative blood types is not performed in these mail-order scenarios, a situation that potentially endangers a patient’s future pregnancies. Finally, she called mail-order abortion pills the “perfect set-up for a trafficker or an abuser” who wants to force abortions on their victims.
