In a 2012 Media Research Center post, Paul Wilson was offended that a Washington Post opinion piece after the Sandy Hook gun massacre referenced another opinion piece that described America’s gun culture as “our Moloch,” whining that the gun lobby was described as “sacrificing children to a pagan god” and “American gun-owners as idolaters.” But Wilson pointed the way to how his fellow right-wingers should properly use the reference: “But the “Moloch” rhetoric might come with more weight from a woman who doesn’t actively defend the murder of thousands of children in the womb each day.”
The MRC eventually started leaning into that attack. An October 2021 post by Matt Philbin touted a highly restrictive Texas anti-abortion law: ‘The law has all the usual feminists, sexual revolutionaries and Moloch worshipers in a tizzy.”
After the leak of a draft of the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, the MRC — already anti-abortion extremists to the point that it endorses an Orwellian surveillance state for women who might cross state lines to have one — ran with the narrative that supporting abortion, and having one, was the equivalent of making sacrifices to Moloch. A May 12 post by Matt Philbin invented what he called the “Moloch List” of businesses who would pay travel expenses for employees who have abortions:
Abortion as an employment benefit? If you work for the right companies. Whether the Dobbs decision reverses Roe v. Wade or not, the left’s meltdown over the draft decision has offered some big corporations a new way to virtue signal. They’re boasting that if employees must travel out of state to obtain legal abortions, the companies will pick up the travel costs.
So far, they’re mostly the Big Tech usual suspects, but some other industries represented on the Moloch List. The list is probably incomplete and the number of companies subsidizing infanticide will, tragically, grow.
Michael Ippolito bumped up the number to the “Moloch 20” in a June 27 post:
With the left completely melting down over Roe v. Wade, woke corporations have found a new way to virtue signal: Abortion access as a fringe benefit.
MRC Culture is keeping a running tally of companies offering to help employees from states where abortion is illegal to travel to murder their children.
Ippolito ranted in a July 25 post: “The left’s fight for abortion continues to become more desperate than they are willing to work with the billionaires they hate. Glad to see the teamwork done to feed Moloch!”
Philbin devoted an Aug. 19 post to attacking Google for covering abortions:
Yeah, it’s funny to remember the days when Google’s corporate motto was “Don’t be evil.” And yet it seems that a lot of the company’s employees don’t think it’s evil enough. They think Google should be a leader of the Moloch List – companies that lavish time and money on employees to kill their unborn children.
In the antiseptic, NARAL-approved language of The Washington Post, “Google staffers are calling on the tech giant to take greater steps to protect workers’ reproductive health, including by expanding travel benefits for medical services to contractors and halting political donations to antiabortion groups.”
Google gives money to antiabortion groups? Who knew?
Philbin also makes it clear that he thinks women who have abortion are sluts:
You know, those salt-of-the-earth laborers with the powered scooters and $14 coffee drinks? They’re organizing for the right to convenient sex. The capitalist exploiters are already shaking so much they can’t keep their monocles on.
An Aug. 23 post by Philbin lashed out at “Moloch List” member Yelp for putting accurate descriptions of crisis pregnancy centers on its website:
For the abortion-worshipping left, every live baby is a missed opportunity. For every unterminated pregnancy there’s a woman who can no longer have a big powerful career, carefree autonomy and meaningless casual sex. It’s a feminist nightmare.
So it helps to have tech companies like Yelp on their side. And make no mistake: Yelp has definitely chosen a side. It was an early entrant to the Moloch List, corporations who made a public show of offering to pick up abortion (and “gender affirming”) travel costs for employees who live in less bloodthirsty states.
Now, as reported by Axios, Yelp is putting warnings on listings for crisis pregnancy centers, lest babies slip through the abortion net.
Philbin didn’t explain why accurately identifying crisis pregnancy centers as the anti-abortion activists they are is such a bad thing.
The MRC was also directly attacking women themselves as serving sacrifices to Moloch. Ippolito complained in a July 19 post about a Teen Vogue article on pro-choice men:
The next pundit was Bryan, who portrayed abortion as the savior of his family. Bryan, who forced his girlfriend to have an abortion, was happy that his mom also got an abortion because of his cool stuff. “The many opportunities that [decision] afforded us later in life, things my siblings and I probably took for granted at the time, like organic food, extracurriculars, cultural enrichment, and having our in-state tuition paid for,” he stated. Glad to see Bryan thought his sacrifice to Moloch was worth it.
Ippolito went on to suggest his manhood was being threatened by this article: “Instead of wanting strong men to raise families, Teen Vogue wants weak men to waive responsibility and encourage the murder of children.”
Two days later, Ippolito lashed out at actress Jennifer Grey for having an abortion as a teenager, dismissing her as an “irrelevant Hollywood lefty is coming out of the woods to give another dumb take on abortion” and sneering, “Once again, another Hollywood leftie decided to have a meltdown over the inability to sacrifice her child to Moloch.”
At the MRC, if you don’t agree with them, you’re not just wrong, you’re evil.