Vatican Approves Excommunication of Raped Girl's Mother

Although abortion is illegal in Brazil, over 1 million women there have the procedure each year.  250,000 of those women suffer trauma due to botched abortions and must be treated by doctors through the government's managed health care system.  Forty percent of Brazil's rape victims are children, whose parents are then forced to break the law in order to terminate their daughters' pregnancy.  Into this ugly morass the Catholic Church has waded, once again demonstrating how oblivious the Vatican is to the suffering of its followers.

A nine-year-old girl from the countryside was impregnated by her stepfather.  The man had been sexually abusing her since she was six.  A medical team in Brazil's northeastern city of Recife performed an abortion on the girl, who was fourth months pregnant.  She was carrying twins. 

When told about the incident, Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Recife excommunicated the doctor, the child's mother, and the medical team involved in the procedure.  The abusive stepfather was not excommunicated because, according to Sobrinho, "A graver act than rape is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life."

Some Brazilians are calling the physician a hero.  From CNN:  A doctor excommunicated by the Catholic Church for performing an abortion on a 9-year-old rape victim received a standing ovation during a national convention on women's health, according to a local media report.  The response came during the opening ceremony of an event hosted by Brazilian Minister of Health Jose Gomes Temporao.  The newspaper O Povo reported that Temporao called on the audience to acknowledge the "brilliant" work done by a medical team in the abortion, performed in Brazil's northeastern city of Recife.

But now the Holy See has stepped into the fray, staunchly defending Sobrinho's excommunication of the doctor and the girl's mother.  According to Agence France-Presse, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic Church’s Congregation for Bishops, said that the case was sad, but that "the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated."

As usual, the Vatican gets things bass-ackward.  The abortion was regrettable.  Abortions are always regrettable.  But despite what Cardinal Re says, the "real problem" is the horrifying sexual abuse this young girl suffered.  Knuckles planted firmly on the ground, the Roman Catholic Church continues slouching toward irrelevance.

Comments

[Heather]

I came across this blog about a month ago and I absolutely love it! Your content is fantastic and you've got a wonderful sense of humor in your writing.

Keep it up! I read this everyday!

Heather

[Max P.]

Thank you, Heather.

[S. Goldstein]

if men had uteri, getting an abortion would be a sacrament

[steven streets]

Im lucky I guess. When I was raped by a priest as a young man there was no possibility of me getting pregnate. That religious education makes me wonder how many child rape victems have to dutifully die in labor before the holy knuckleheads get their egos distended enough to actually love one of gods victims more than themselves.I pray for them. I pray for the Blessed Virgin to slap the snot out of them.

[Rosemary LYNDALL WEMM]

I suspect, but do not know for certain, that all three lives would have been lost if the pregnancy was allowed to continue: the child and the two potential twin humans. Instead, only two potential lives were lost and the life of a fully formed human child was preserved. I think that means that the doctors were demonstrably more "pro-life" than the clergy.

[Doug VanWinkle]

Just another reason I will never be a Catholic.

[Rob]

Cases like this are where religion begins to cross the line from harmless fantasy to having real world consequences. If this case is not an argument for the abolition of bronze age myth from our modern society, I don't know what is.

[Alex]

On the flip-side - some people who made a sensible decision no longer have to wake up early on Sundays

[David Meech]

"Cases like this are where religion begins to cross the line from harmless fantasy to having real world consequences. If this case is not an argument for the abolition of bronze age myth from our modern society, I don't know what is."

Couldn't agree more. Well put.

There are very few, if any rules that apply to every relevant situation. I can't call myself a concrete pro-choicer/pro-lifer (although I do lean more to the former than the latter) But each situation has to be dealt with individually according to the circumstances. I firmly believe the actions of the Vatican, and Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho are disgusting in its purest form. This organization has WAY too much power and influence for the day and age we live in, and the world could definitely use teaching our children to use critical thought and judgment and not to rely on outdated, flawed and doctored religious texts as a foundation for morals and decision making.

[Alan Wortman]

I've thought about this for a bit, and I've decided something. Who cares what these guys think? Who cares what the Vatican thinks? Excommunication is probably the best thing that could've happened to the girl and the doctors.

And here I thought Islam was bad for condoning having sex with a 9 year old bride. Leave it to Catholicism to one-up them by essentially ignoring the rape of a 6 year old girl.

[Erra]

Hmm... I read the news articles about this - the doctors assigned to the child's case thought that due to the child's small size she would be unlikely to survive to bring the pregnancy to term.

It would have been morally indefensible to allow the pregnancy of a nine-year-old rape victim to continue.

Even if her health had not been endangered, her age alone makes abortion the most moral option.

That archbishop should have been condeming the pedophile who raped the girl. Priests like this give Catholics a bad name.

[derek]

Can I be excommunicated??

[detrix]

choosing the lesser of two evils here is absolutely bull$^@#. Both evils should have been dealt with. They think they are doing Gods will, BULL!!!

[Candace]

"Knuckles planted firmly on the ground, the Roman Catholic Church continues slouching toward irrelevance." Love that!

The fact that the girl's small size made it unlikely that she would survive bringing the pregnancy to term would have made no difference to "Holy Mother Church" because the church insists that the (potential) life of the child must always be given precedence over the life of the mother. I think it's Catholics who give Catholics a bad name.

[Cyril G]

Disgusting old farts... The robes that the papal priests are wearing are red because they are covered in the blood of the innocent teenage girls who died while delivering their sins.

How disgusting that they did not see the father fit for excommunication and the mother because she chose abortion

I am glad I am an atheist.

Go to hell Church!

[Eleusis]

Just goes to show once again how dangerous, backward and ridiculous religion is.

All of you religious people, of ANY faith, need to wake up, open your eyes, and realize that there is no magic invisible man in the sky, nobody turned water into wine without the help of grapes, yeast, and a few days fermentation time, and nobody ever rose from the freakin' dead after three days in a cave.

More murders have been committed in the name of religion than any other "cause".

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Scientologists etc (all equally stupid) are all desperately clinging to some weird idea that we live after we die.

Well I've got news for you, Sunshine.

We are no more special than any other animal: when we die, we are gone forever. Suck it up and enjoy your life, it's the ONLY ONE you've got.

p.s. I copied my comment from here: http://www.oregonlive.com/clackamascounty/index.ssf/2009/07/jury_hears_father_recount_fait.html those parents deserve prison, and these people are lucky to be "excommunicated" from another dirty filthy religion.

“Happy shall they be who seize your infants
And dashes them against the rocks!” (Psalms 137.9)

[Andrew]

I would have agreed with the view of this article a year or two ago, but I've started to think about it this way:

If you believe that a fetus is a human life, does it really matter what the circumstances surrounding the creation of that life are? Aborting would be no different than killing a 6 month old infant (though of course there are the health complications for the 9 year old, which is partially why the doctors aborted, I'm sure).

If you believe that the fetus isn't a human life, it doesn't matter what the circumstances surrounding the creation of that life are. Aborting is no different than killing a cow.

It gets slightly more complicated when the fetus is endangering the mother, of course. But I think that's the only instance in which it's complicated.

That being said...I'm definitely on the pro-choice side of things. Good for the doctors for choosing to abort.

[Joshua Ludd]

Did they excommunicate the rapist first???? Of course not.

[Andy]

A fetus holds a potential for life, and life does have a certain sanctity. But if we cannot respect the lives of those who have already been born, why are we bringing more into the world? Until we can be sure that every single child can be guaranteed fundamental human rights, to be safe, loved, and have the potential for growth and happiness, then I will remain pro-choice and anti-religion.

[Tasha]

The Vatican needs to be told what happens when a stepfather rapes his daughter. He killed an innocent the first time he raped her, no matter she continued breathing. He killed her trust, destroyed her childhood, and can never make that right. This man was supposed to protect her. Instead, he destroyed her.

I'm frankly surprised the church didn't excommunicate the child for "tempting" the stepfather when she was six in the first place.

[John]

"I'm frankly surprised the church didn't excommunicate the child for "tempting" the stepfather when she was six in the first place."

They were feeling generous that day. They must have all had a fun night with the altar boys beforehand.

[sara griffin]

from my livejournal post:

welcome to the churches ideology an ideology that on one hand kills people slowly and painfully with no hope of a cure, Aids and Hiv - thou shalt not use condoms and yet in the other does this for rape.
an ideology that kills people by teaching that its not ok to be who you are. (when someone hides who they are, even for a second, that like a death of a million soles.)

more over "thou shall not lay with the same sex" yet "umm yeah we didn't mean to touch that kid.... he was just moved to a different area where there are more kids..."
... See more
this is the logical proof that there is no such thing as god, for there to be a god it must be omnipotent yet if the omnipotent one has a paedophilia inducing (many grown paedophiles where once abused themselves and struggle to come to terms with it, without support there is a greater chance they themselves will go on to abuse, not always though, there needs to be better support for the abused)

rape justifying (as we see time and time again this article is one of many) torturing (Spanish inquisition) kidnapping (the Irish children's workhouses where folk where stolen from there families for "the chance of a better life") murdering "holy fathers" as a mouth piece then surly this evil that they do must not be able to one one hand do these evil unspeakable things yet preach of the existence of god, Christ (that's not his name btw as Jesus was a mistranslation of יְהוֹשֻׁעַ Yehoshua aka Joshua, Mary and Joseph where not called Joseph and Mary Christ) reading from a book that justify s rape, slavery, torture, murder, and many many other horrific things there must logically be no god as god would no longer be omni potent... the bible being the word of god?

i have yet to find a better argument for the logical conclusion of there being no such thing as the existence of a Jewish/Christian/Muslim god of this or any description

[Natalie R.]

The way I look at it is this: Everything alive now is going to die. Everything that has lived, died. Everything that will live, will die. So...where's the sanctity? What part of life is sacred if, on a long enough time line, we all kick the bucket anyway?
It's best to take care of the little girl, who's already born, in danger, and has gone through *enough.* Just let the poor girl have some peace.

[caseywollberg]

Fuck religion. Here's the problem: we all know what is moral. We are moral by nature; we don't need men in silly hats to tell us what is right and wrong. So, what happens is that the men in silly hats make shit up. They pronounce, "Well, ahem, life begins at conception! Therefore abortion is murder!" On what basis? None. Not even a biblical one! They just fucking made it up. So, these made up fairy tales handed down to us from religion GET IN THE WAY of our morals, to the extent that the religious are capable of horrendous abuses like this one. The majority of the world is religious. That means most people are morally handicapped by fairy tales. Let that sink in.

[4est]

Why do most of them have to wear a hat that looks like a take-out box, while the one guy in the foreground gets to wear a cheese-wheel?

I don't understand the symbolism of the silly hats! I HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THE SILLY HATS!!!