The story first made the news because a lawyer for the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil declared that the nine-year old should have been forced to carry the pregnancy to term and called the abortion murder.
Then a regional archbishop in Brazil excommunicated the mother of the girl, the doctors who performed the life-saving surgery, but not the alleged rapist (who is also suspected of repeatedly raping the nine-year old's disabled teenage sister).
So this is just Brazil, right?
Well, now the Vatican has defended the excommunications:
A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped.Can someone explain to me how the nine-year old girl is not also an innocent life?
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church's Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a right to live.
[snip]
Re, who also heads the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, added: "Life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified."
[snip]
The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the foetuses to term.
"God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value," Cardoso had said.
He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed "a heinous crime ... the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious".
Battista Re agreed, saying: "Excommunication for those who carried out the abortion is just" as a pregnancy termination always meant ending an innocent life.
Can someone please explain how the nine-year old girl's mother and doctors were not trying to save an innocent life?
Can someone justify this to me?
Seriously.
For some reason, I'm reminded of something David just blogged about.
I am also reminded of the fact that the Republican Party Platform wanted to outlaw all abortions including those to save the life of the mother which in the this case would have been a NINE-YEAR OLD GIRL.
.
i was furious when i first heard this the other day. i still am.
ReplyDeletethis is just sick. a 9 year old rape victim and the church is just WRONG and perverted!
and so are people that say not even for life or health!
I*'m still waiting for someone to attempt to defend this.
ReplyDeleteProvided that this is all accurate (I am reminded of some other supposedly hideous act that occurred in South American, but turned out to be a hoax...) I don't find it surprising at all. As a "recovering Catholic," I am quite aware of their penchant for complete and utter intractability, in the face of all logic. Clearly they are willing to cling to "absolutes" until the last church closes for lack of interest....and due to pure disgust!
ReplyDeletei'll preface this by saying there are good decent people of every faith and no faith but i've had enough of the catholic church as an institution.
ReplyDeletenot only as a woman, but, as a mother and grandmother i have simply had enough. this pushed me right over the edge. i was raised pre-vatican II. i was a freshman in '65. i know the rules and the thinking. THIS is beyond screwd up.
this is cruelty in the worst degree. this is torturing a child.
a 9 year old. this baloney about fetilized eggs being human beings the same as that poor child is bogus.
It seems to me that the Old Testament and Talmudic discussions thereof conclude that the mother's health and well-being supersedes the potential of life for the fetus.
ReplyDeleteOne day I hope to understand how involvement with the New Testament may permit one selectively to throw out precepts that were in the Old.