The Pro-Choice Generation

(Pictured: Demonstrators hold a banner during an antiabortion march in Brasília)

Earlier today, I made a post about a 9 year old Incest victim in Brazil.

I saw a note on it from Cincocirculos.

They had some problems with the article.

First that it was 3 years old, which I did point out in my original post and doesn’t change the fact that it happened.

Secondly that I didn’t use a reputable source. This one is my fault. I should have looked up a better source. Cinco was kind enough to provide me with a link to a Time article. It was written around the same time as the Care2 article that I linked earlier (about a week earlier actually).

The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. “God’s laws,” said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. “They took the life of an innocent,” Sobrinho told TIME in a telephone interview. “Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be an innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely innocent. Taking that life cannot be ignored.”

The case has caused a furor. Abortion is illegal in Brazil except in cases of rape or when the mother’s life is in danger, both of which apply in this case. (The girl’s immature hips would have made labor dangerous; the Catholic opinion was that she could have had a cesarean section.) When the incident came to light in local newspapers, the Church first asked a judge to halt the process and then condemned those involved, including the 9-year-old’s distraught mother. Even Catholic Brazilians were shocked at the harshness of the archbishop’s actions. “In this case, most people support the doctors and the family. Everything they did was legal and correct,” says Beatriz Galli, the policy associate for Ipas Brasil, an NGO that fights to give women more say over their health and reproductive rights. “But the Church takes these positions that are so rigid that it ends up weakened. It is very intolerant, and that intolerance is going to scare off more and more followers.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883598,00.html#ixzz1sKEagYpe

I’m sorry for using the Care2 article.

The Time Article says pretty much the same thing.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

-Jon

9 Year Old Incest Victim’s Abortion Sparks National Debate in Brazil

In a real life example of how dire the need to protect girls, a 9 year old Brazilian girl’s mother was excommunicated by the Archbishop allowing her daughter to abort twins the daughter claims were the result of being raped by her stepfather. Doctors determined that the child’s uterus was not capable of supporting one fetus, let alone two and that trying to bring the pregnancy to term and give birth to the twins would most likely kill her. What was the response of her church to this crime?  Her Archbishop excommunicated her mother for allowing the abortion to happen and the doctors who performed the procedure.  The girl’s stepfather, who has been arrested for raping the child and her sisters repeatedly, is the only person not excommunicated by the Archbishop. How’s that for compassion?

The New York Times reports that the Brazilian Ministry of Health reports that the number of legal abortions of girls ages 10 to 14 more than doubled last year, and according to medical professionals and other experts, there is a widespread problem of sexual abuse of under-age girls that may be getting worse. From the Times story:

“A part of Brazilian society still doesn’t want to stop treating women like they are property,” said Jefferson Drezett, a gynecologist and coordinator of the sexual-abuse victims service at the hospital. “This has to change.”

Keep in mind that most of Brazil’s abortions are not legal. The Ministry of Health estimates about one million unsafe or clandestine abortions every year and they don’t know how many of these dangerous abortions involve girls who are victims of rape and incest.

What is more alarming about this case is how often it occurs around the world.  According to Plan, 68,000 teenage girls die from unsafe abortions every year and teenage girls account for nearly half of victims of sexual assault worldwide.  We don’t even know what those same statistics are for even younger girls like this Brazilian victim.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/archbishop-excommunicated-9-year-old-incest-victim-for-abotion.html#ixzz1sHqRP1Y4

The church expected this 9 year old child to carry twins even though her body couldn’t support them.

How “pro-life” of them.

Please note that this article is from 3 years ago. I’m just doing some research on victims of back alley abortions and this popped up.

-Jon