Satanists Defend Planned Parenthood Abortion Clinic From Pro-Lifers on Good Friday

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Mar 28, 2016   |   3:15PM   |   Detroit, MI

Pro-life Christians who were praying peacefully outside of a Michigan abortion clinic on Good Friday faced mockery as they remembered Jesus’ death on the cross.

The Pro-Life Action League organized the peaceful prayer vigil outside the Ann Arbor Planned Parenthood and 70 other abortion clinics across the country on Friday to remember the innocent lives of unborn children lost to abortion and Jesus’ crucifixion. The group compared Jesus’s suffering and horrific death on the cross to the suffering that unborn babies experience every day inside the nation’s abortion clinics.

The Michigan pro-lifers faced a much more hostile environment than many of the other vigil groups on Friday. A small group of pro-abortion Satanists from Detroit showed up to mock them, wearing all black and carrying a cross, The Daily Beast reports.

Jex Blackmore, leader of the Detroit Satanists, carried a wooden cross and wore a crown of thorns and a fake pregnancy belly, according to the report. Around her were other Satanists also dressed in black, with names of pro-life legislators painted on their backs, while another Satanist carried a black-and-white American flag and wore a black jacket with a picture of an extended middle finger. The group called the protest the “Sanctions of the Cross” in mockery of the pro-lifers’ Stations of the Cross vigil, the report states.

“The Satanic Temple believes that all people are entitled to make informed decisions about their health, family and future without coercion,” the group said in a press release. “The philosophical and religious opinions of some should not be used to legislate morality.”

The group said the cross they carried symbolized the “burden of oppressive mandates endured by women.”

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“The Satanic Temple believes that the body is inviolable, subject to our will alone,” Blackmore told the news outlet last year. “We consider theocratic reproductive mandates an attempt to control and degrade the individual.”

In December, Blackmore gained attention in the liberal media when she blogged about her abortion, step by step. She decided to blog about aborting her unborn baby because of pro-lifers’ work to pass new legislation to protect more unborn babies from abortion.

“As you know over the past year The Satanic Temple has been invested in finding creative ways to challenge oppressive reproductive rights legislation,” she told the liberal website Jezebel. “As someone who has been deeply involved in the planning and implementation of these projects, it’s surreal to suddenly be on the other side of the mirror—last week I discovered that I’m pregnant.”

On Friday, the Satanists said their protest was another part of their goal to stop pro-life legislation in Michigan, according to the report.

“In the current abortion debate, she said, “it’s not the fetus, nor the church that suffers—but women who bear the greatest burden,” Blackmore said.

But the pro-lifers’ vigil recognized both the unborn babies and the women who suffer because of legalized abortion. The group prayed for unborn victims of abortion and their mothers, communities, abortion industry workers and abortion advocates.

Executive Director Eric Scheidler said in a press release that they have seen prayers save unborn babies, heal women who are hurting and move hearts to compassion for unborn babies.

“These children’s lives are ended, deliberately, before they even get to take their first breath,” Scheidler said. “As Christians, we seek Christ’s forgiveness for our sins. This sin of killing our own children is one of which our entire society must repent. If we cannot protect the child in the womb, we will never truly be a civilized, compassionate people.”

The Good Friday pro-life vigils were held in 28 states and led by clergy from various Christian denominations.

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