Welcome to Samuel Alito's Mom's Satanic Abortion Clinic

Yes, it's a real thing, providing real medical care. And its outlandish strategy may just be the most genius reproductive justice play of our time. Or a detrimental distraction, depending on who you ask.

- ARIELLE DOMB

ROSE FRADUSCO ALITO GAVE BIRTH on April Fool's Day, 1950. Hundreds of women would die that year from botched illegal abortions in the United States, where the procedure had been widely banned for decades. But here in the Alito household in suburban New Jersey, all was grand. Rose thrilled at new motherhood. She was a schoolteacher, then a principal. Her husband Sam was a teacher too, then a director in state government. Their son, named after his father, would go on to do important things someday; Rose could feel it. When she died in 2013, Samuel Alito Jr. was all grown up, with a big fancy job on the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's unlikely that Rose ever considered abortion for herself (a few years before she passed away, she told reporters she opposed it). But what if her circumstances had been different-if her own life had been endangered by the pregnancy or if the fetus had a fatal anomaly or if Rose simply hadn't been ready for a child? What if she'd had a choice and access to safe, legal abortion care? Nearly 75 years later, in a reproductive rights landscape that feels like it's sliding back in time, one group decided to channel this policy fantasy into a new health care enterprise named in her honor.

Samuel Alito's Mom's Satanic Abortion Clinic. Does it sound like pure clickbait? Sure. But beneath the outlandish branding lies a sincere mission: The New Mexico-based telehealth practice, a legitimate medical entity run by an accredited clinical team, offers abortion care to patients within state lines. The staff prescribes abortion pills (at $91 per set, a competitive price) up until the eleventh week of pregnancy and offers 24/7 phone access to licensed medical personnel to anyone in need. It's just that they're also Satanists, members of a religious organization called The Satanic Temple.