‘Imaginary Religion That Worships Abortion’ — Performance Artist Holds Faux Mass Service To Worship ‘Female Autonomy’

On Palm Sunday, the Bombay Beach Lit Fest, “a four-day weekend of literature and conversation” was host to the inaugural mass of the Church of Potential Life, a religious ceremony aimed at worshiping abortion.

A piece of performance art created by Los Angeles-based writer and artist Jackie DesForges, the faux worship service was oriented around a large canvas, which served as an altar. The canvas contained pages from the draft Supreme Court opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito that leaked last year in the run-up to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which rolled back legal protections for abortion access.

The art piece, titled SUPREME O, is meant to “convey rage for what has been and what still is (and joy for what could be) while the structure is inspired by various art movement manifestos.”

While many Christians and other pro-life advocates saw the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a monumental victory nearly five decades in the making, others, including DesForges, saw it as a step backward for women’s rights. 

“I was very mad, like a lot of people were,” DesForges told Insider. 

SUPREME O is an art form called erasure poetry and consists of pages from Alito’s leaked draft opinion with many of the words whited out to create a new message. 

“They had all the sources that they cited in this document, and I could use the same sources to prove a different point,” DesForges said. “There also was a huge power…where I was like, ‘Okay, you can write this resounding opinion about what you think the situation is and so can I, using your exact same words, basically.'”

The artist, whose Twitter bio reads “When I am President, abortions will be buy 1 get 1 free,” described the erasure poem as “a manifesto for a new, imaginary religion that worships abortion, and it will serve as the altarpiece for the ceremony.”

After creating the artistic “manifesto,” DesForges conceived of the religious ceremony as an accompanying piece of performance art, drawing on her Catholic upbringing to shape the style of the environment and the ceremony itself. 

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“I think I used to be so anti-everything Catholic and everything church. I had a lot of complicated feelings for a while without it, and now I’m very much in the place where I can kind of take what I need from it and leave the rest behind,” DesForges said of the faux mass service to worship “female autonomy.”