Vile and evil
It is absolutely outrageous that the Catholic Church thinks those who allowed a nine-year old Brazilian girl to have an abortion to save her life are committing a greater sin than the man who impregnated her. It is vile that the Church thinks that it is fine to excommunicate the girl’s mother who wanted to save her young daughters life - but not excommunicate the girls stepfather who impregnated and abused her for years.
Instead the Church wants to prosecute the mother for securing the abortion and excommunicate the doctors for administering it.
Rape is against the law in Brazil, but abortion is permitted in cases of rape where the mother’s life is at risk. The church says that the law of God is above any human law, meaning that abortion as a result of rape is worse than rape and serial sexual abuse itself. Why? Because the Catechism of the Church says that sexual misconduct is not in the list of “grave personal sins”. Instead it is merely a heinous crime.
[update: but apparently it is a grave personal sin to take communion after not repenting for a sin like sexual abuse, meaning that a person who raped is committing a bigger sin akin to abortion merely by taking communion without repenting.]
The stance by Catholic leaders has nothing to do with God’s law or the teachings of Jesus at all. As a Christian I find the position of the church – ie: that the girl had less of a right to live than her unborn child – sickening, intolerable, and absolutely repulsive. I find it disgusting that church leaders think that it is fine to murder a girl while delivering her babies only for these babies to grow up orphans if they are delivered alive. Bishops who kick you out of the church for allowing an abortion that will save a life, but move you to the next parish if you are a rapist priest are fit only for the pit of hell.
While I'd like to know what Catholic readers think of the Church’s position on this, I'm sure there are Catholics leaders in this country who disagree with stance taken by their fellow clergyman, while still remaining pro-life - as all Catholics should.
Labels: Catholic Church, rape
7 Comments:
Go Dave, cut and paste the comment at NZ Conservative.
I dare you!
I don't want to aggravate my Catholic blogfriends for the sake of it, or inflame things on another blog whose authors may not agree with me as it is unhelpful.But I do want to express my opinion, and they aer welcome to comment here.
Dave
What is vile and evil is the view that abortion is equivalent to murder.
If you do accept that premise, what the Church did is correct because it's clearly wrong to kill two innocent people just to increase one person's chance of survival.
The only way to avoid absurdity is to deny that a foetus has the same rights before birth and after birth.
If abortion is homicide then justifications for it must be consistent with justifications for homicide in all other cases.
If the girl had given birth but the circumstances had remained the same, would she be justified in killing the twins?
No
Therefore the Catholic Church were being consistent.
Getting caught up in the horrific nature of what the stepfather did is allowing your reasoning to be run by your emotions.
If abortion is not homicide then you need to argue for it. Assuming it, stating it does not establish it.
We are all horrified at what the stepfather did to the little girl.
Child rape warrants the death penalty.
However, the death penalty must be carried out on the rapist, not inncoent third parties.
Say the arguments are about about preservation of life.
If the death penalty must be carried out on the rapist, then just as many people may have died, the girl in giving birth and the rapist, assuming the babies lived.
Had the babies died at birth and the girl died giving birth and the rapist got the death penalty, - or - had the babies been born orphans, and the man given the death penalty, would that be preferable to the current situation?
Abortion is vile and evil and is the same as murder, in this case, the girl should have been allowed to make the decision, the babies could have been adopted out, but that's never an option over abortion is it?
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