Congregants gathered to worship abortion at the first mass of a new church exalting women's autonomy

The following article was obtained through Insider.com and written by Katherine Tangalakis-Libbert.

A crowd prays before the Church of Potential Life altar, 

created by Jackie DesForges. © Matt Ellis

• Jackie DesForges began imagining her Church of Potential Life after the Dobbs decision was leaked.
• As she watched reproductive rights roll back across the nation, she created an altar and new church.
• In March, the Church of Potential Life held its first mass, worshipping abortion and female autonomy

At a renegade art and literary festival in Bombay Beach, California, Jackie DesForges knelt and prayed with passersby at the inaugural mass of her new church. Reading aloud from a sermon re-written using Supreme Court language, the group didn't merely celebrate — they worshipped abortion.

The idea to create a performance art church came to DesForges last year after a draft opinion of the Supreme Court decision that would ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked.

"I was very mad, like a lot of people were," DesForges, a Los Angeles-based writer and artist, told Insider. The anger and sense of grief over the loss of abortion rights, she said, inspired her to create the provocative symbol of hope, which took shape over the next year.

She had recently started creating erasure poems, painting over or whiting-out passages in books and other writings to create new poetry from the words left behind, and was inspired to do so with the language from the legal document that rolled back reproductive rights for women across the country.

"So I decided I wanted to do something with this draft, and kind of write women back into it," DesForges told Insider. "And I decided I wanted it to take the form of a manifesto for kind of this new, imaginary religion that sort of worships abortion and female autonomy."

Jackie DesForges performs the first mass of the Church of Potential Life 

to an audience at the Bombay Beach Biennale. © Matt Ellis

DesForges combed through the nearly hundred-page draft of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization opinion, erasing and re-structuring the language of Justice Alito to create an altar-sized poem, which she displayed at the Bombay Beach Biennale art and literary festival in March.

Before a small crowd, DesForges read aloud from the church's manifesto, completed a Gospel reading, and then, with a basket passed around to participants like a reverse donation plate, she encouraged Church of Potential Life congregants to take with them phrases from the manifesto, offering single lines of prose to think on.

DesForges said she drew power for the project by "taking the Supreme Court's words and kind of using them against them" reclaiming the words and the reasoning used to strip women of access to abortion.

"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 is that for me, I think, 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."

Raised Catholic, DesForges said the project was also an act of reclaiming a sacred space after she left the church and recognized different religious perspectives on abortion. She noted that in certain Jewish faiths, abortion is not only allowed but required to protect the health of a mother, making an abortion ban a potential violation of their freedom of religion — and for those who follow her church.

"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.

That mentality appeared to resonate with those who saw her performance, she said, adding that audience members shared their own experiences and thoughts on abortion and religion with her following the mass, praising her project and its aim to open a dialogue.

"It was truly like, the perfect location, at the perfect time," she said, noting the fear regarding abortion access is still palpable as nationwide access to abortion-inducing drugs mifepristone and misoprostol has been called into question. "It just felt meant to be."