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Feb. 26th, 2003 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaSometime soon, I'm going to post something cheerful. Not this time.
Through![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
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Date: 2003-02-27 06:25 am (UTC)In this case, the team of doctors chose to be wishy washy. Their official decision was that either course of action would endanger the mother's life, so the decision was up to the parents. The parents went ahead with the abortion.
However, the church has so much influence in the government that it has pressured the Ministry of the Family (in charge of child protection) and the Ministry of Health to go after the parents and the doctors who performed the abortion. The legal system is such that a private citizen can go to the government and allege that a law was broken, and require the government to investigate. So, a few days ago, a private citizen did just that. What's not clear (or hasn't been released) so far is who is being accused of wrongdoing--the parents, the doctors, or both. In any case, the government has no choice but to investigate the case, although it's really quite clear that the abortion was performed legally.
Several women's groups have, in their turn, opened cases against the Health Minister and the Minister of the Family, alleging that they allowed their personal religious beliefs to interfere with their duties as representatives of the government.