9-year-old gets abortion, Catholic church opposes

[moggie]

It's a horrifying story, however you look at it:

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) A 9-year-old girl who was carrying twins, allegedly after being raped by her stepfather, underwent an abortion Wednesday despite complaints from Brazil's Roman Catholic church.

...

Fatima Maia, director of the public university hospital where the abortion was performed, said the 15-week-old pregnancy posed a serious risk to the 80-pound (36-kilogram) girl.

...

But Marcio Miranda, a lawyer for the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil, said the girl should have carried the twins to term and had a cesarean section.

"It's the law of God: Do not kill. We consider this murder," Miranda said in comments reported by O Globo.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8386645

And I consider you a monster, Miranda. You want to force a tiny kid to carry twins to full term, putting her through months of emotional and physical suffering and serious risk to her health, just to save a couple of feti which probably weren't viable anyway? Sometimes I wish it were possible and morally permissible to force male priests and church lawyers to undergo unwanted pregnancies.

[Meshuga]

1. For these church leaders it is better for the girl and the fetuses to die than to get an abortion

From what I read in a Brazilian newspaper the girl was already having complications before finding out she was pregnant. She was in danger and the procedure was a must (and it was performed yesterday, thankfully). I felt terrible for her. She has been sexually abused since she was 6. :-(

[JerseygirlCT]

5. Makes you wonder where the hell these guys -

who feel so comfortable interfering with the most private of medical decisions - had been while this child had been viciously abused for three years.

Guess THAT isn't very important.

It's truly sickening.

[rug]

2. An abortion on these facts is likely permissible under Catholic moral theology

on the basis of the "double effect principle".

http://www.ascensionhealth.org/ethics/public/issues/abortion.asp

[patriotvoice]

12. I don't think so. Destroying the fetuses because they are the product of rape is direct abortion...

which is prohibited. For the abortion to be doctrinally permitted, the abortion must be a concomitant effect of curing a serious pathology of the pregnant mother. Being 9 years old isn't a "serious pathology", and any general statistical evidence to suggest increased birth defects by young mothers isn't sufficient to prove that would necessarily be the case for *this* mother.

On edit:
Also, the likely death of the mother resulting from bringing the child to term is not a "serious pathology" of the pregnant mother. The mother's death by the process of childbirth is "God's Will to murder", which is permitted. Aborting the fetuses to save the mother is "Man's Will to murder", which is not permitted.

[rug]

13. No. If her uterus would rupture, thereby killing her, it would likely be allowed.

[patriotvoice]

17. I respectfully disagree.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01046b.htm

"Abortion was condemned by name, 24 July, 1895, in answer to the question whether when the mother is in immediate danger of death and there is no other means of saving her life, a physician can with a safe conscience cause abortion not by destroying the child in the womb (which was explicitly condemned in the former decree), but by giving it a chance to be born alive, though not being yet viable, it would soon expire. The answer was that he cannot."
...
"However, if medical treatment or surgical operation, necessary to save a mother's life, is applied to her organism (though the child's death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked. Moralists agree that we are not always prohibited from doing what is lawful in itself, though evil consequences may follow which we do not desire. The good effects of our acts are then directly intended, and the regretted evil consequences are reluctantly permitted to follow because we cannot avoid them. The evil thus permitted is said to be indirectly intended. It is not imputed to us provided four conditions are verified, namely:
1. That we do not wish the evil effects, but make all reasonable efforts to avoid them;
2. That the immediate effect be good in itself;
3. That the evil is not made a means to obtain the good effect; for this would be to do evil that good might come of it -- a procedure never allowed;
4. That the good effect be as important at least as the evil effect.
All four conditions may be verified in treating or operating on a woman with child."

Aborting the fetuses to save the mother violates condition 3.

[rug]

18. You're right, if the only action they can take is to directly abort the fetuses.

[Christa]

3. The church is a pre-historic, cold blooded monster

:grr:

The sooner it dies out, the better.

[rug]

4. Don't hold your breath.

[Christa]

7. I know

But we can only hope articles like this help to speed up the process.

[EvilAL]

8. Yup,

It would have been another nail in the coffin for me anyway, but I have no more room to hammer the nails in without hitting another one.

[ComtesseDeSpair]

6. As Sinead once correctly said:

Fight The Real Enemy!

[Goblinmonger]

9. Just more Catholic bashing

as expected here on DU

Yeah, in case you are completely clueless, I am being sarcastic.

[Sal Minella]

10. You forgot the "sarcasm" tag.......

[Goblinmonger]

14. I thought it was pretty clear.

Though if you use your mouse to highlight the entire post, you'll see I put it in there in case there was some argument about my intentions.

[tanngrisnir3]

16. Except, of course, that it's not Catholic bashing in the least.

[Marrah_G]

11. I think that lawyer is incredibly ignorant.

[SidneyCarton]

15. Sadly, none of this is suprising for Brazil.

The lawyer is a moron, and the Church was absolutely asenine to even approach this issue at all. This CHILD was the victim of INCESTUOUS RAPE, making such a tragic and horrific case the basis of an anti-abortion tirade suggests a high level of delusion in the minds of the Olinda/Recife Archdiocese. While the Brazilian public is mostly Catholic, and traditionally, if not dogmatically devout, I would assume that a majority of Brazilians who hear of this case will sympathize with the child, not with the Archbishop. If not proof of these men's monstrous insensitivity and cruelty, these acts suggest an incomprehensible stupidity.