Satan is now a feminist
The devil works hard, but the Republican party works harder. Not a day seems to go by without anti-abortion zealots on the right promoting some devious new plan to strip women of their bodily autonomy. In addition to shuttering abortion clinics, Republican states are trying to essentially ban abortion pills: On Friday, Missouri, Kansas and Idaho renewed a legal effort to drastically access reduced to mifepristone.
In the midst of this hellscape, help may be at hand from a somewhat unlikely source: Satan. Or, to be more accurate – and since the devil is in the details – the Satanic Temple.
Founded in 2012, the satanic temple (not to be confused with the very different Church of Satan) is not about devil worship. Rather, it’s about raising hell to fight for freedom from the religious right’s crusade to force their beliefs on everyone else. “Right now we have a minority religious theocratic movement, so entrenched in politics and get away with whatever they want,” co-founder Lucien Greaves told the Guardian earlier this year.
The Satanic Temple, recognized as a religion by the IRS, uses the religious right’s tactics and their victories against them. When a Ten Commandments monument was erected at the Oklahoma state capitol in 2012, for example, the temple submitted an application to sit next to a 7-foot-tall statue depicting Satan as Baphomet, a goat-headed figure with horns. In its application, it argued that the decision to have a Ten Commandments monument paved the way for satanic representation. (They weren’t the only ones protesting: the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster also requested a monument.) In the end the statue of the Ten Commandments remove by order of the state supreme court and the Horned One was not immortalized in Oklahoma.
Over the years, the Satanic Temple has tackled issues such as prayer in the classroom, after-class Bible study groups and the distribution of Bibles in schools. Now, for obvious reasons, it is increasingly turning its not-so-evil eye to abortion rights. Last year, it opened an online abortion clinic in New Mexico called The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic, citing the conservative justice that the majority opinion which overturned Roe v Wade. “In 1950, Samuel Alito’s mother had no options, and look what happened,” Malcolm Jarry, co-founder of the Satanic Temple said at the time.
As with its other causes, the Satanic Temple marks abortion as a core part of its religious beliefs. Women are asked to recite a ritual (“By my body, my blood, by my will, it is done”) before taking abortion pills to ward off “unjust persecution.” The temple also sued states that banned abortion, argue that abortion is a religious ritual for their congregation and that denying them access to these ritual abortions would be a constitutional violation.
All this had the desired effect of making the Satanists’ opponents evil. The Christian Research Institute, an evangelical group, describe the group as “troll lords” and said they were “using their cartoonishly dark and villainous brand to agitate the public and bully the Christian Right into a judicial showdown”.
That showdown could be possible because the Satanic Temple just opened its second telehealth abortion clinic, this time in Virginia. It’s called the Right to Your Life Satanic Abortion Clinic. “We are also actively working to increase access in other states, including taking legal action in restrictive states like Indiana and Idaho to provide religious abortion services there as well,” the temple said. said in a statement. Truly, they are doing the Lord’s work.
“It is important to protect people, mainly the younger generation, from the ideology of childlessness that is forced on them on the Internet, in the media, in movies and in advertisements,” said one politician. I imagine that JD Vance, who has very strong views on “childless cat ladies” nods frantically along with all this, taking notes for copycat legislation in the US.
US startup hires couples to ‘screen embryos for IQ’
Video footage shot by the group Hope Not Hate and reviewed by the Guardian shows the company Heliospect Genomic marketing its services at up to $50,000 for 100 embryos, with one manager boasting a possible profit of more than six IQ points. A genetics expert told the Guardian that one of the many problems with this “is that it normalizes this idea of ’superior’ and ‘inferior’ genetics… [and] reinforces the belief that inequality comes from biological rather than social causes”.
Women in the UK who go into cardiac arrest in public are less likely to receive CPR
According to to a new studyThis is because bystanders are concerned about touching women’s breasts when they give chest thrusts. The report suggests that better training could address this problem and save lives.
More American women than men have tattoos
Thirty-eight percent of women versus 27% of mento be exact, according to Pew Research Center. The Washington Post examine the ways that some women use tattoos to represent a way to “reclaim control” over their bodies.
A South Korean court recognizes misogyny as a motive for hate crime in landmark ruling
The judgment has been made regarding a case where a woman was attacked by a man who shouted “feminists deserve to be beaten” because she had short hair.
Donald Trump calls himself the ‘father of IVF’ during a Fox News town hall
After this nonsensical statement, he added that he didn’t actually know what IVF was until Senator Katie Britt, whom Trump described as a “fantastically attractive person from Alabama,” explained it to him. “And in about two minutes I got it,” exclaimed the former president. Donald: I’m not sure you really did.
Nicola Coughlan says being called a ‘plus size heroine’ is insulting
Coughlan had strong words for viewers who called her “brave” for the nudity scenes in season 3 of Bridgerton. “Don’t call me brave. I have a cracking pair of breasts… it’s really just me showing them,” she shared Time magazine. “I’m a few sizes below the average size of a woman in the UK and I’m seen as a ‘plus size heroine’… It’s reductive and boring to talk about how I look.”
Palestinian woman shot by the IDF while picking olives in the West Bank
Hanan Abu Salameh, 59, picked olives with her family when she was killed. Her son said that the Israeli forces started shooting randomly and shot his mother as she fled. The IDF said it was “investigating”, but based on previous “investigations”, one does not think anyone will be held accountable.
The week in pawtriarchy
An American paraglider flying over Egypt’s great pyramids noticed something unusual recently on top of the second highest pyramid. Was it a bird? Was it a plane? No, it was a dog who apparently scaled the 448-foot-tall structure so he could bark at birds. After a satisfying barking session the dog made his way down safe. However, since it is illegal to climb the pyramids, the adventurous animal may find itself in the doghouse.
