Don’t Count on the Satanic Temple for a Legal Abortion
The organization claims religious exemption for its members as they pursue abortion care. The reality is much more complicated.
In DepthIn Depth
Illustration: Allison Corr
It all sounds so impishly perfect. If the United States legal system reveres religious freedom, often trampling on others’ rights to rule in favor of religious plaintiffs, why not try to beat it at its own game? That’s been the implicit strategy of The Satanic Temple (TST) since its founding in 2013. Courts regularly grant legal protections to Christians, so Satanists, too, try to advocate for their religious rights—righteously swooping in like a horned superhero to fight against corporal punishment in public schools and religious monuments on public property. Even if they lose, they at least point out hypocrisy in the process. TST has gained notoriety for its efforts to oppose injustice and now has more than 700,000 members and 675,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
But the courts have been dramatically reshaped since TST’s founding and now do things like let Texas’ six-week abortion ban take effect in open defiance of Roe v. Wade—a decision the Supreme Court officially overturned on Friday, paving the way for many more states to adopt abortion bans. Things on the bodily autonomy front are scarier than ever, and people desperately want to believe there’s a way out of this hell. TST appears to offer one.
On May 5, days after the leak of the draft opinion gutting Roe, TST chimed in on Twitter, saying it had “positioned itself to protect religious abortion access for our members.” It continued, writing that members in some states that ban abortion “should be permitted a religious exemption” if they perform TST’s “religious abortion ritual.” (TST also said it would sue the Food and Drug Administration to give it access to abortion pills.) In effect, TST’s messaging went beyond claiming that its members are exempt from oppressive state abortion restrictions (like waiting periods, medically unnecessary sonograms, and mandatory counseling prior to abortion procedures) to suggesting that outright bans post-Roe won’t apply to its members—its most aggressive framing of the issue yet. TST echoed this boldness on Twitter Friday, about three hours after the court overturned Roe, saying: “The Satanic Temple is the leading beacon of light in the battle for abortion access. With Roe v Wade overturned, a religious exemption will be the only available challenge to many restrictions to access.”
These comments aren’t terribly surprising given TST’s past efforts to challenge abortion restrictions—covered by this website and many others, as well as broadcast widely by admirers on social media—but abortion advocates are increasingly concerned that TST’s reproductive rights campaign is, at best, unhelpful and, at worst, an ineffective stunt that puts pregnant people in legal jeopardy.
It is not difficult to become a member of the Satanic Temple—all it takes is a couple clicks on the website to reach the membership signup form, and it’s free to join (though optional membership cards are $35). There’s no swearing allegiance to the devil or the supernatural, as TST doesn’t believe in Satan but rather is devoted to advancing secularism, or the separation of church and state. (Still, you can enjoy its kitschy aesthetic—upside-down pentagram, goat-headed deity, red and black color scheme. It’s even headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, home of the 17th century witch trials.)
For its members, TST flatly claims exemption from abortion restrictions in clinics like waiting periods and ultrasounds if they perform the “religious abortion ritual,” which involves looking in a mirror and reciting two of TST’s tenets before taking pills or having the procedure. Its wording sounds pretty confident: “The Satanic Temple has announced that its Satanic abortion ritual exempts TST members from enduring medically unnecessary and unscientific regulations when seeking to terminate their pregnancy.” To take advantage, TST offers a letter of religious exemption for members to show to medical practitioners, allegedly giving members legal grounds to circumvent abortion restrictions. Easy enough—that is, if the abortion provider honors the letter. If the provider does not and a member still has to endure the restrictions before they can get an abortion, that member can email TST so as to determine “the next steps of resolving the situation and deciding whether to take legal action.”
Now, with Roe gone, we have entered a period when clinics will overwhelmingly halt abortion services in hostile states, leading more abortion-seekers to take matters into their own hands. In practice, “taking matters into your own hands” in a state with an abortion ban will, for many, mean ordering abortion pills online. TST’s exemption language on its website might reassure people that they have legal backing if they do. TST has not explicitly told members they are legally protected when ordering abortion pills, but it also has not officially addressed overly simplistic information spreading online that seemingly indicates TST’s ritual will protect people having abortions. In a worst-case scenario, pregnant people in hostile states who order pills could get arrested if they seek care for complications at a hospital, or if someone reports them to the police. The abortion-seeker will have been thrust into the criminal legal system. The closest TST has come to outwardly acknowledging the risk is saying “we will likely have to sue those states to affirm our civil rights, but the law is clearly on our side.”
people desperately want to believe there’s a way out of this hell. TST appears to offer one.
Denise Rodriguez, communications manager for the Texas Equal Access (TEA) Fund, an abortion fund serving north Texas, said she’s wary of TST promoting an unproven loophole, especially for people who manage their own abortions with pills. “[People] could possibly put themselves at risk for criminalization trying to do this,” Rodriguez told Jezebel. “[TST] encouraging people shows a lack of understanding or knowledge about how the criminal justice system actually can really harm a lot of marginalized communities.” More than 1,300 people were criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes between 2006 and 2020, according to National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
