Brazil girl, alleged rape victim, aborts twins

[Riek]

This will teach that pesky Mom and doctors!

http://www.theage.com.au/world/vatic...0308-8s49.html

This is my favourite quote:

He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed "a heinous crime ... the abortion - the elimination of an innocent life - was more serious".

So evidently it's okay to rape kids and get them pregnant, but the powers that be will strike you down if you dare abort a fetus to save a nine year olds life.

[Theairoh]

-9999999 for humanity.

[leira]

Does the Catholic Church regularly excommunicate people who kill children(ie the ones that have been born)?

While I think that the people excommunicated will be far better off without the church, I think it will take them a while to realise it. In the meantime though, these actions will just traumatize the poor girl further than she already has been. It really seems to me that they are just using this girl as an example to show that there are no circumstances where they will tolerate abortion. Pretty despicable if you ask me. Hasn't she suffered enough?

[Khortez]

"The doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl of nine years old,"

I guess the church is going to ignore the girl's right to life so they can spend another week or so on the TV telling everyone how bad abortion is...

[Malacasta]

I thought the information in the quote below was interesting.

(A) significant number of Church fathers throughout history have held that abortion early in pregnancy was less serious than later on. From Augustine, to Jerome, to Aquinas, it was held that only once the body was formed, and the fetus became animated ("fetus animatus"), was abortion akin to murder. This seems to be the prevailing view by the 5th century. In the early 13th Century, Pope Innocent III held that "fetus animatus" began, and ensoulment occurred, at the time the woman first felt the movement of the fetus. In the 16th Century, Pope Gregory XIV put this at 16 1/2 weeks (116 days).

It wasn't until the 17th Century that the idea of "simultaneous animation", which held that ensoulment occurred at conception, began to gain more support. Then, in 1869, Pope Pius IX dropped the distinction between "fetus animatus" and "fetus inanimatus". In 1886, Leo XIII prohibited all abortions at any stage, even to protect the life of the mother, and required excommunication as punishment. And in 1917, Canon law was revised to refer only to "the fetus".

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/6/104025/4951
While some parts of the religious community have long played emancipatory roles in history, it would appear that in this case, as science, suffrage movements and workers movements were overthrowing the way people understood their place in the world, the catholic church simultaneously reduced the rights of half their congregation (more if you consider that men are also affected by unwanted pregnancies) to control their bodies and lives. It would be interesting to know whether was a reaction to losing so much authority elsewhere. Anyone know?