Catholic Church shocked by abortion by 9 year old raped by stepfather

The Catholic Church is absolutist when it comes to abortion, but you would think this might give them pause:

A 9-year-old girl who was carrying twins, and whose stepfather is suspected of raping her, underwent an abortion on Wednesday despite complaints from Brazil’s Roman Catholic Church.

Amazingly, since she is only 9, there is also a serious health risk for the girl. Now I don’t expect the church to condone abortion even in a case like this, but couldn’t they keep silent? Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but judges can make exceptions.

There’s a bit more here:

Doctors in the northeastern city of Recife performed the abortion on Wednesday after deciding that the girl could have died if her pregnancy with twins was allowed to continue. According to media reports, the girl was nearly four months pregnant.

and it seems the church has excommunicated the mother and doctors.

and more here. I really like this (bold added):

Gomes Sobrinho, who belongs to the most conservative sector within the Brazilian Roman Catholic Church, said those who have been excommunicated will not be allowed to take communion or to receive other sacraments, although they may yet avoid going to hell.

They even thought about bringing suit against the mother:

The archdiocese said it declined to file suit against the girl’s mother. This decision was reportedly due to the fact that its lawyers considered it unlikely that such a complaint would be successful.

where they were going to try to get her charged with murder.

Update: this case should be brought up any time someone talks about how pro-choice people should try to compromise with ‘pro-life’ people. Here we have a 9-year old girl, raped by her step-father, who very well might die if the pregnancy continues and the Catholic Church not only thinks the girl should continue the pregnancy, but that the mother and doctors are going to hell and should be charged with murder. What would be the compromise? They’re only going to purgatory or limbo and should only be charged with manslaughter?

Also, remember this whenever someone tries to tell you that if abortion is made illegal, no one really wants to really punish anyone. The Catholic Church believes that the women and doctors should be charged with a crime and punished (in Brazil, a women who has an abortion can be put in jail for 1-3 years).

3/7/09 Update: the Vatican agrees with the Brazilian bishop:

Cardinal Re, who heads the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for Bishops and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, told La Stampa that the archbishop had been right to excommunicate the mother and doctors.

“It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated,” he said.

“Life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian Church is unjustified.”

The attacks are unjustified only if you believe a fetus is more important than the 9 year old. This is the belief of the Church:

“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.”

and:

Asked why he did not excommunicate the stepfather who sexually abused the girl, Gomes Sobrinho said: “He committed an extremely serious crime. But that crime, according to canon law, is not punished with automatic excommunication.”

“Abortion is even more serious. The Church and the whole world condemn the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews. What is happening [with abortion] is a silent Holocaust,” he said.

So, the abortion here is worse than a man repeatedly raping a girl for 3 years (starting at age 6) and the chance that the fetuses might be born alive outweighs the chance that the girl might die. Maybe this attitude is why this is not an isolated incident in a region that is heavily Catholic.