(no subject)

[rivka]

Sometime soon, I'm going to post something cheerful. Not this time.

Through riarambles' journal, I've been following the story of a nine-year-old Nicaraguan girl who was raped by an adult man. She became pregnant, and was also infected with two STDs which were left untreated because of potential harm to the fetus, while the government tried to decide whether she should be permitted to have an abortion. The Catholic Church in Nicaragua urged that the child - who is young enough that when she was asked whether she wanted to have a baby she talked about not wanting to share her toys with another child - be forced to continue her pregnancy.

The governmental medical board assigned to review the case ruled that the child was in as much medical danger from an abortion as she would be if she carried to term. Doctors volunteered to do the procedure even with this ambiguous level of legal support (they're now being threatened with prosecution), and she tolerated the procedure well. She's now being treated for her infections. She and her family are on the road to healing...

Except that her parents, her physicians, and all of their supporters have been promptly excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Or, as a church spokesman, guided by a God of love and mercy, prefers to say, they excommunicated themselves.

If you are Catholic, you have the opportunity to volunteer to share in the sentence of excommunication by declaring yourself to be one of the child's supporters. As for myself, I'll be praying that healing and peace be granted to the child and her family - and that a spirit of compassion be granted to the church officials standing against them.

Comments

[redbird]

Have they excommunicated the man who raped her, or would that make too much sense?

[riarambles.livejournal.com]

Heh. They ought to, and several women's groups are calling for him to be excommunicated. He's still in Costa Rica, but has been released from jail on a technicality. They're saying that he doesn't have the same STDs that the girl got as a result of the rape. Of course, they've been trying to hang the rape on the girl's father or stepfather ever since the story broke.
It's nothing if not a morass of confusion and idiocy.