As I’ve previously noted here, here, and here, there’s been quite a controversy created by a Brazilian Archbishop’s decision to excommunicate the mother of a 9-year old rape and incest victim who had an abortion, along with the doctors who performed the procedure.
Now, it appears that some in the Church are stepping back and acting just a little more rationally:
VATICAN CITY – An influential prelate said Brazilian doctors didn’t deserve excommunication for aborting the twin fetuses of a 9-year-old child who was allegedly raped by her stepfather because the doctors were saving her life.
The statement by Archbishop Rino Fisichella in the Vatican newspaper Sunday was highly unusual because church law mandates automatic excommunication for abortion. Fisichella, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, also upheld the church’s ban on abortion and any implications of his criticism of excommunicating the doctors and the girl’s mother weren’t clear.
Fisichella argued for a sense of “mercy” in such cases and respect for the Catholic doctors’ wrenching decision, and strongly criticized fellow churchmen who singled out the doctors and mother for public condemnation.
“Before thinking about excommunication, it was necessary and urgent to save her innocent life and bring her back to a level of humanity of which we men of the church should be expert and masters in proclaiming,” Fisichella wrote.
The doctors, Fisichella noted, had said the child’s life was in danger if the pregnancy continued.
“How should one act in these cases? An arduous decision for the doctor and for moral law itself,” Fisichella wrote, urging respect for the inner “conflict” that the Catholic doctors must have suffered before deciding on the abortion.
(…)
Fisichella criticized the archbishop’s public denunciation, writing that the girl “should have been above all defended, embraced, treated with sweetness to make her feel that we were all on her side, all of us, without distinction.”
Fisichella stressed that abortion is always “bad.” But he said the quick proclamation of excommunication “unfortunately hurts the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy.”
Archbishop Fisichella is, of course, absolutely correct. Even taking into consideration the seriousness with which the Church views abortion, the lack of even the slightest degree of sympathy or mercy for the child, her mother, or the doctors involved in all of this is a display of the same type of utter callousness that led the Church hierarchy in the past to cover-up widespread sexual abuse of children in the name of protecting the Priesthood. In the end, it accomplishes nothing and, while I am clearly not the best authority on the subject, I don’t see how it is compatible with the teachings the Church claims to advance.
In addition to Fisichella, the excommunication has also been criticized by other high-ranking Catholics including a group of French Bishops.
And then there’s this odd statement from the conference of Brazil’s Bishops:
BRASILIA – Brazil’s Catholic bishops conference denied that the archbishop of Recife and Olinda, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, excommunicated the mother and doctors who practiced a legal abortion on a 9-year-old girl that was pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather.
The secretary general of the bishops conference, Dimas Lara Barbosa, said that the prelate “at no time excommunicated anyone.”
It’s hard to figure out from the context of the article whether the conference is saying that Sobrinho didn’t have the authority to pronounce the excommunication, or that it wasn’t justified. In either case, it seems like a fairly clear rebuke of what was little more than a cold, heartless decision.
H/T: Wizbang
Because the excommunications would be automatic, it would never be correct to speak of Archbishop Sobrinho “excommunicating” those involved in the abortion. The parties would excommunicate themselves. Archbishop Sobrinho issued a reminder that, at the objective level, excommunication is the penalty. He did this both to invite repentance on the part of those involved, and to prevent copycat crimes in the future.
In contrast, Lara Barbosa’s clarifications were at the subjective level. For any sin to be mortal, the standard conditions must obtain: the sin must be grave; the sinner must fully know the gravity of the sin; and the sinner must fully consent to the sin. Further, under canon law certain mortal sins can incur automatic excommunication, but again, at the subjective level, the sinner must be aware of that penalty in advance.
The Associated Press lede is inaccurate. Archbishop Fisichella did not say that the excommunications were undeserved, but rather that their urgent and public proclamation was insensitive (expressed empathy for the nine-year-old rape victim was the priority) and unnecessary (the excommunications are automatic). The media regularly distort words from Rome (the last example was the washing machine flap: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/03/the_vatican_and_washing_machin.html).
Still, to the extent that the reporting is accurate, statements like Archbishop Fisichella’s are nevertheless fallible. Vatican officials have been known to make decisions and pronouncements before being thoroughly acquainted with the subject at hand (see, for example, the mishandling of the Archbishop Williams case). Archbishop Fisichella seems to be under the impression that the abortion benefited both the emotional and physical health of the nine-year-old rape victim.
Archbishop Fisichella refers to the abortion providers as having helped the girl “to regain hope and trust.” Sadly, the counter-intuitive reality of rape-pregnancy-abortion outcomes is not well known. According to research and experience, the documented facts are that abortion of a pregnancy due to rape is a worse trauma than the rape itself, and overwhelmingly regretted by the women involved – who tend to recall being coerced into a violent procedure they did not request; whereas those who carry such a pregnancy to term (whether or not they raise the child after birth) overwhelmingly do not regret this choice (please see, for instance http://www.unfairchoice.info/pdf/FactSheets/HardCases.pdf).
Archbishop Fisichella refers to the abortion providers as having helped the girl “to live.” That is the popular impression, but the facts are not clear, especially because abortion itself is a medically risky, and sometimes lethal, procedure. Sadly, the medical opinion that the girl’s life was in danger was found through provider-shopping: “Although doctors at the hospital where the girl was initially admitted, Imip, reportedly said that her life was not in danger, her mother reportedly transferred her to another hospital, Cisam, that was willing to do the abortion …” (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09030601.html).
Repeatedly, wherever abortion restrictions have been liberalised globally, a hard-case example has been used as justification. This girl’s case has been publicised and used for an agenda well-beyond her well-being. It is now hard to imagine that her anonymity will be preserved and that she will find the safe place that she needs to begin healing from the rape. Talk about insensitive and unnecessary.
We are right to show compassion to a victim-survivor like this girl. In our emotional eagerness, let’s not rush so much that we overlook principles and facts; for when we do, we risk exacerbating existing tragedies with our ignorance.
So Blanche,
You’d be okay to let the 9 year old girl die trying to give birth to these twins, right ?
Doug, I’m not the first reader to point out your error here.
On March 7, James Young wrote: “Well, of course a threat to her life would make a difference. Then it would be traditional self-defense, which is always an accepted exception to an abortion proscription, going back to Blackstone. However, you know as well as I do, Doug, that the advocacy media is likely overstating the threat in pursuit of their agenda. For them, ‘convenience’ is a ‘threat.’”
And on March 12, Bill wrote: “‘A 9 year old whose “life” and mental health are threatened by living the consequences of rape and incest?’ Her life is threatened? Really? Thats just untrue. You don’t have to make stuff up to get your point across.”
I don’t read enough Portuguese to go to the primary source news articles; I’m not a medical doctor, though I am a health professional; and I’m not treating this particular child. Given those caveats, I provided you with a reference from Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, who does his homework as a journalist, explaining something essential from the local reports we don’t have: the initial medical opinion was that this girl’s life was NOT in danger.
I also alluded to the point made by your two other readers above: that pro-abortion advocates can and do manipulate stories like this even at the expense of children’s best interest. Cullinan Hoffman previously reported a clear-cut example of these falsehoods in Nicaragua and Costa Rica:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07081602.html.
And his editor John-Henry Westen was vindicated by the New York Times regarding a story out of El Salvador:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07010801.html.
Falsehoods have been part of the movement to liberalise abortion laws from the beginning, which we know from the many founding activists and providers who are now pro-life. See, for instance, NARAL co-founder Dr. Bernard Nathanson on how he once captured the media with lies; played the Catholic card; and obscured scientific reality:
http://www.aboutabortions.com/Confess.html.
Lastly, please note that the translated full name of ISIP is Mother and Child Institute, whereas that of CISAM is Amaury de Medeiros Center for Integrated Health. Both are major hospitals in Recife, but the former’s specialists would be knowledgeable in obstetrics and gynecology. So let’s not discount ISIP’s assessment that the girl was actually capable of continuing with the pregnancy. Bioethics isn’t a game.
Yes, you’re right it’s the “advocacy media’s” fault, despite the fact that every article has noted that her life was threatened.
And, quite honestly, even if the threat was minimal, I’d make protection of her life and mental health the priority here.
Doug, I’ve taken pains to bring to your attention that local sources reported that ISIP found the girl’s life not to be in danger. I’ve also given you just some of the growing body of material documenting that abortion is/was not in the best interest of mental health; and I chose to use as a source the actual voices of rape/incest survivors, several of whom had become pregnant and experience abortion following the sexual abuse. There’s more where that came from, including the international evidence that, even controlling for the rape, this abortion places the girl at an exponentially higher risk of suicide.
In both your replies to me, you’ve assumed that I devalue this girl’s life and mental health. I’ve never made that assumption about you. The best explanation for your position is that you’re simply unfamiliar with the research, and and the voices of those who have actually suffered those traumas. One who will take the time to click on the Unfair Choice link will be humbled to hear from victim-survivors that they find assumptions like yours to be patronising and coercive.
We’re going in circles because you’ve not actually been willing to examine the evidence.
No, it’s just that, unlike you, I choose not to second-guess the doctors or the girls mother, who presumably had better information than you and I and, in the mother’s case, the best interests of this girl at heart.
I think it’s silly for us to sit here arguing over this to be honest. It’s done, and the girl will probably be better off for it to be completely frank abou it.
Doug,
You are indeed second-guessing the doctors — the ones at ISIP who determined that the girl’s life was not in danger. As a trauma specialist with substantial knowledge of the assessment and treatment of child sexual abuse, I’m so sorry to say that, when a mother’s two daughters are violated by her husband over a number of years, we CANNOT know from this distance that she has the girl’s best interests at heart when she takes her for an abortion. In your own country, Planned Parenthood has repeatedly been caught in the act of covering up incest and the rape of minors by providing abortions to conceal the evidence; and I can tell you professionally that adults, including moms, have all too often done the same.
But, we’re done here for now, Doug. I was open to reasoned dialogue, and your responses seem shot from the hip. You claim to know both that my motivations are negative and that the abortion providers’ and mother’s motivations are positive — and you haven’t evidenced familiarity with the referenced material I provided. You’ve had three strikes and you’re out. If you choose to actually read what I’ve written and the links I’ve included, please do let me know; you have my e-mail address.
Let me just say, as the author of those articles, that I read the news in Portuguese directly from Brazil. The local media quoted the hospital saying that the girl’s life was not in danger at the time the abortion occurred. That’s a fact, documented in the major media in Brazil. The idea that there was “danger” was purely hypothetical and based on the idea that her body was too small to deliver the twins – even though thousands of girls between 9 and 14 deliver children every year in Brazil. In Brazil, in fact, according to the government’s own statistics, girls between 10 and 14 years of age have lower maternal mortality rates than the population on average.
A cesarean section could have easily saved the children while protecting the girl from the rigors of childbirth, so that was always a false concern.
The facts are the facts.