Saturday, March 7, 2009

Catholic Church = Epic Fail

"A Vatican cleric is defending a Brazilian archbishop's decision to excommunicate several doctors who performed an abortion last week on a nine-year-old girl who became pregnant with twins after alleged sexual abuse by her step-father.

"It is a sad case, but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated,'' Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re told the Italian daily La Stampa." (CBC)

A nine year old girl is sexually assaulted and becomes pregnant. Clearly nobody else was coming to this unfortunate girl's side, so doctors performed an abortion to save her from being a 9 year old mother and the Church decides that the innocent babies were the real victims, so out go the doctors and the girl's MOTHER! Yes, that's right, the girl's mother was also ex-communicated. And just in case you think it's because she was part of the abuse, think again.

As for the incestuous step-father? Well, the bishop "did not excommunicate the step-father, saying the crime he is alleged to have committed, although deplorable, was not as bad as ending a fetus's life.".

We all know that the Catholic Church has a fabulous reputation of protecting pedophiles, but this... this is something else.

I'm not one for sensationalism and although this appears to be a case of extreme sensationalism, I feel it's important for feminists to continuously take a stand against garbage like this. Although this may appear to be an "extreme" example of religious fantaticism, I believe that all acts of violence, and violence against womyn in particular, exist on a continuum.

There really are no words for something as despicable and disgusting as this. Shame on you Vatican; shame on you.

1 comment:

Making !T Work said...

You are correct in your assessment of how bad this is. We all have to stand up and be counted on this. The first and real victim is the young 9 year old girl. As usual the perpetrater is coddled and the Doctors trying to right a wrong are used as symbol of the religious power abuse.

I support the doctors. This blog only goes to demonstrate why structured religion is irrelevant if we want to proceed as a society.