NL- Happy Sunday! (I was raised Catholic BTW) I don’t wade into the shit called The Vatican very often, but this is just despicable.
from http://www.stumbleupon.com
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.
Of course rapists can attend church. If not, where would the priests go?
Check out Obama’s 180 degree stance on Marijuana laws! Is he high or does this yet again prove that he lied to get elected? Changing his mind is not change we can believe in!
I live right down the street from a medical complex that does do abortions. I’m a male that strongly believes in a woman’s right to choose. Just about every day out in front of the medical center are Christian Mafia folks with banners and posters protesting the abortions being done there. Quite often when you drive by they are out there with posters showing aborted fetuses and sometimes the pictures look like bloody hamburger.
A few years ago I drove by with my 10 year old niece (she is now 13) and when she saw the picture on the poster she asked me what was that picture? Not sure how to answer I said “oh sorry honey I’m driving and didn’t see what it was, ask your mom or dad”. I was driving and didn’t see the poster some holy roller was holding but I can imagine what it was.
I would love to be able to tell the folks out there protesting that If you don’t want there to be abortions then lets send all those unwanted kids to your house! I bet you would not see so many folks out there holding up bloody signs.
This surprises you? Fundamentalist Baptists allow pedifiles, rapists but shun their victims, when will people understand that that is where these people are hiding and continuing to offend among their parishioners.
Its true. And they can confess all their sickening crimes one day only to be forgiven by God and the congregation…
All sin is not the same. Abusing a child is not the same as watching porn.
I believe also that if the girl didnt receive the abortion she would have died as her cervix was too small for birth. The collars and the big white hat really fucked up on this one. There is a Planned Parenthood office not too far from where I live, most of the time there are three men holding signs, two are retired and look almost like their wives put them up to it and the third guy looks like some stew bum they pay $20 a day to hold up the sign of an aborted fetus.
I wonder what “Saint Shelley” has to say about this…I can’t wait.
KarmaFan makes an excellent point. Sometimes, on the way home from work, I’ll take an alternate route to pick up incense (Shrivnas Super Hit, baby!) from the local Greatful Dead Merchandise/Head Shop. There’s a Baptist church on the way, and sometimes parked outside, lengthwise, so it can be seen from one of the longest, busiest, and most important roads in the city, is what I call the fetusmobile. It’s a fucking van splattered with high-def photos of human fetal remains.
I never take that road with my kid in the car.
If it was a set of boobs on the van, there would be Hell to pay. Now, I’d rather my child not see boobs or human remains at his age, but if given the choice between driving by the boob van or the bloody mess van with kid in tow, I’d take the boob van any day.
I attended Catholic school my whole life, and in third grade we were shown a film showing live Fetuses get vacummed. Most of the boys tried to smile and laugh to not show weakness. I myself, was partially traumatized by the film, but kind of giggled and joked anyway, so I wouldn’t be ridiculed. Every girl in the class cried with some leaving the class room screaming. True story. You don’t think about the wrongness of something like that when you’re eight-years-old and pre-occupied with transformers and whatnot, but looking back on it now, it kind of pisses me off.
this story is two years old…..