So I’m actually of two minds about this. On the one hand, anti-abortion types already think feminists are in league with Satan, so this certainly won’t help. On the other hand, anti-abortion types already think feminists are in league with Satan, so how much damage can it do, really?
Following the Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which established that companies are free to enforce bullshit restrictions on women’s health care on their employees if said bullshit corresponds with their religious beliefs, another religious group has stepped forward to claim their religious exemption: the Satanic Temple.
On Monday, the group launched a campaign in support of accurate medical information for women and, specifically, exemption from “informed consent” laws requiring women to hear unequivocally inaccurate information and scary warnings before being allowed to get an abortion. The Satanic Temple “believes that the body is inviolable subject to one’s own will alone” and supports health decisions “based on the best scientific understanding of the world, regardless of the religious or political beliefs of others.”
In their statement, TST said:
Informed consent bills requiring abortion providers to give their patients official “informational” material regarding the procedure have been criticized in the past for providing biased and false information to women in a bald effort at dissuading them from abortions. Such materials have included claims of a link between abortion and breast cancer, as well as claims regarding a depressive “postabortion syndrome”, both of which The Satanic Temple view as “scientifically unfounded” and “medically invalid” and therefore an affront to their religious beliefs.
On their Web site, the group provides a letter that women can print out and take to their doctors to claim their religious exemption from informed consent laws.
Reports of JCPenney sacrificing pure-hearted employees to assuage the Dread Lord Cthulhu, Bringer of Madness, are as yet unsubstantiated.