Friday, March 06, 2009

A profound loss of innocence

I first learned of the nine-year-old Brazilian incest victim yesterday via twitter.  I was working so I could not make a post. Instead, I let the anger build up inside me. I should learn to let it go, but I can’t. Incest alone is enough to set me off. When you add the  pious and judgmental Catholic Church, I quickly reach the boiling point.

Thanks to AnAtheist.net and The BEattitude…

The story goes… A nine-year-old Brazilian girl was raped by her stepfather. She became pregnant with twins. The pregnancy placed the young girl’s life at risk, so the state sanctioned an abortion.   The Catholic church protested the abortion and eventually excommunicated the girl’s mother.

"The law of God is higher than any human laws," he said. "When a human law — that is, a law enacted by human legislators — is against the law of God, that law has no value. The adults who approved, who carried out this abortion have incurred excommunication."

Brazil’s health fights back with logic and reason.

Brazil's health minister accused the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday of an "extreme" and "inadequate" position in opposing an abortion for a 9-year-old girl suspected to have been raped by her stepfather…

"I believe the position of the church is extreme, radical and inadequate," Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao said on a government radio program.

"I am shocked by the radical position of this religion which, wrongly saying it is defending a life, puts another life in danger that is as important as any other."

The Catholic Church was even willing to play hardball.

Before the abortion was carried out the archdiocese’s lawyers threatened to charge the mother with homicide, citing the Brazilian constitution’s guarantee to the right to life.

When a young victim needed nothing more than support, her church cast her aside for the sake of principle. The Catholic church was willing to let her risk death. I feel the wrongness of their actions at the very center of by being. Love and compassion guild me to help the victim, to save her life, to protect what is left of her shattered innocence. Christian love  is a jack-booted thug seeking to preserve the profane at the expense of the innocent. No thanks. We are better off without Christian love.

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