The Satanic Temple band releases music video depicting 'abortion ritual' in Hobby Lobby bathroom
A band associated with The Satanic Temple (TST) released a profane music video Wednesday that depicts a woman re-enacting its satanic "abortion ritual" in the bathroom of a Hobby Lobby.
Satanic Planet, a band that includes TST co-founder Lucien Greaves, released a video[warning: graphic] for its song "Sam Alito's Mom," which is a reference to TST's online abortion clinic of the same name. The clinic claims to provide "religious medication abortion care" by offering "medication via mail to those in New Mexico who wish to perform The Satanic Temple's Religious Abortion Ritual," according to its website.
The text of TST's religious abortion ritual, which is available online, emphasizes worship of the self by gazing at one's reflection and affirming one's own will before performing a drug-induced abortion.
Against the backdrop of screaming heavy metal, the woman in the music video enters the women's restroom at a Hobby Lobby store to perform the abortion ritual, which the video describes as "a destruction ritual that serves as a protective rite" whose purpose is "to cast off guilt" and "empower the patient against those with theocratic religious convictions."
After looking at herself in the mirror and taking abortifacient drugs, the woman prayerfully sits on the toilet before flushing her baby, returning to her own reflection and reading an affirmation that echoes the liturgy of the Eucharist: "By my body, my blood, by my will, it is done."
The video concludes by showing various Christian-themed products sold at Hobby Lobby being engulfed in flames, including an image of Jesus with children, Scripture verse plaques, a sign reading "One Nation Under God," as well as a cross emblazoned with "faith," "hope" and "love."
The song is from Satanic Planet's new album Dead Deities, which purports to offer "an aggressive, pitch-black, deeply surly call-to-arms against autocracy in the age of Christian nationalism," according to a YouTube description.
Hobby Lobby, which did not respond to The Christian Post's request for comment, has repeatedly been the target of TST's ire since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that the Christian-owned retail chain could opt out of providing contraceptives to employees on the basis of their religious beliefs.
TST cited the precedent in the Hobby Lobby case that year to argue that their own members' supposedly religious beliefs regarding self-worship should exempt them from certain state-level abortion restrictions and waiting periods.
The Salem, Massachusetts-based Satanic Temple, which was founded in 2012 and claims to have more than 1.5 million members worldwide, denies belief in a personal devil, saying its mission instead is "to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits."
During a 2023 interview with Fox News ahead of TST's "SatanCon" in Boston that year, evangelist and former occultist John Ramirez dismissed claims that satanists do not believe in a personal devil or communicate with demonic forces.
"These people are a bunch of jokes because this is how they trap people," said Ramirez, who was inducted into the witchcraft of Santería when he was a boy. "I lived in the satanic kingdom for 25 years. I lived in the shadows of the demonic for 25 years. I would talk to Satan all day long, all night long."
"So these people tell you they're a temple, they're a religion, but they don't serve Satan, which is all hogwash; they do," he said. "On the front door, they say, 'We call ourselves satanists, but we don't serve Satan.' But then that's like a Christian saying, 'I'm a Christian, but I don't serve Jesus.' How can you be a Christian not serving Jesus? Either you have one master, or you have the other."
Ramirez, who claims to have been a high-level warlock until a supernatural experience of Hell led him to submit his will to Jesus Christ, noted that he used to astrally project his consciousness into the spiritual realm to invoke demonic power over entire regions. He said the influence of the demonic has become unmistakable as American culture becomes increasingly depraved.
"We make Sodom and Gomorrah look like kindergarten," he said. "We are darker by the minute. This society has lost its conscience of right from wrong. We don't even blush anymore. Whatever is right in people's eyes, that's what they do."
