In honor of Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito—who last year penned the majority opinion overturning the constitutional right to reproductive freedom—the Satanic Temple officially opened the “Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic.”
The idea behind the clinic's name is simple.
The Satanic Temple—contrary to protesters' allegations it promotes Satanism and is a detriment to the nation's youth—is a nontheistic human rights group whose website states the organization "promotes egalitarianism, social justice, and the separation of religion and state."
In its official announcement, the organization said the telehealth clinic "will provide medical abortion medication through the mail to those who wish to perform TST’s Religious Abortion Ritual" and stressed it is "committed to protecting bodily autonomy, assuring religious abortion access, and providing free quality care.”
The clinic will offer low-cost abortion medication to patients in New Mexico while providing screenings and follow-ups for free to all. The cost of medication is only $90 when accessed through the clinic, which will be staffed by licensed medical professionals and have a 24-hour on-call patient hotline.
The organization's website says it will help those “who need assistance to travel to New Mexico when possible.” The location itself was chosen because New Mexico borders a number of red states with some of the toughest abortion restrictions in the country.
The group said laws which impede its Religious Abortion Ritual—which is intended to “de-stigmatize this medical procedure”—violate the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which safeguard its beliefs in bodily autonomy for all.
Many celebrated the move and applauded the group's deliciously unsubtle trolling of Alito.
No word on what Justice Alito thinks of the clinic's name just yet though his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization continues to be contested in court.
This week, a federal judge argued the federal right to an abortion might still be protected by the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, raising the question of whether the Supreme Court’s decision is limited to 14th Amendment grounds.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in her order that the 13th Amendment “has received substantial attention among scholars and, briefly, in one federal Court of Appeals decision," citing a paper by Andrew Koppelman, a Northwestern University School of Law professor who suggested the 13th Amendment's prohibition against involuntary servitude provides a textual basis for preserving the right to an abortion.
