Nine-Year-Old Has Abortion Despite Roman Catholic Church’s Objections
A nine-year-old girl who had been pregnant with twins after allegedly being raped by her stepfather, underwent an abortion on Wednesday despite complaints from BRAZIL’s influential Catholic Church.
The girl, who was not identified because she is a minor, was last week found to be four months’ pregnant after being taken to hospital suffering stomach pains.
Officials said she told them she had suffered sexual abuse by her stepfather since the age of six.
Police said the 23-year-old stepfather also allegedly sexually abused the girl’s physically handicapped 14-year-old sister.
He was arrested a week ago and is being kept in protective custody. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
Abortion is illegal in Brazil, which has more Catholics than any other nation, but judges can make exceptions if the mother’s life is in danger or the fetus has no chance of survival.
The case has sparked off fierce debate in Brazil, Fatima Maia, director of the public university hospital where the abortion was performed, said the pregnancy, which was in its 15th week, posed a serious risk to the girl, who weighs 80 pounds.
But Marcio Miranda, a lawyer for the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil, said the girl should have carried the twins to term and had a Caesarean section. “It’s the law of God: Do not kill,” he said in comments reported by the newspaper
An archbishop for the northern region where the termination was conducted, Father Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, said the church was excommunicating all those responsible for the abortion: the medical team and the girl’s mother.
The operation – carried out because of doctors’ fears the slender girl might die if she carried the fetuses to term – was a crime in the eyes of the chuch, he said.
“God’s law is above any human law. So when a human law … is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value,” Archbishop Cardoso told the news television network Globo.
“The adults who approved, who carried out this abortion, will be excommunicated,” said the archbishop for the Recife region.
Brazil’s health minister accused the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday of an “extreme” and “inadequate” position.
“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.”
Temporao, who has frequently challenged the church on issues from abortions to the government’s supply of free condoms, defended the doctors’ decision to perform the abortion, saying they had acted “strictly within the law.”