http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/humanrights/1206/rdpulpit:_excommunicating_the_victims

Has anyone heard about this story? I'ts crazy! A father rapes his daughter repeatedly since she was 6 years old, and gets her pregnant with twins. She's only 9 years old, weighs only 80 pounds, and doctors determine that her body (especially her pelvis) isn't developed enough to carry twins and it would probably kill her. So, her mother gets the poor child an abortion. The Catholic church tries to file an injunction to stop the abortion, but when they are too late, they excommunicate the mother, the doctor, and everyone involved in the abortion, except for the father. The Bishop says his sins are forgivable, but everyone involved in the abortion procedure is unforgivable.

What do you think?

Well in my opinion I know this may cause upset with some so I am sorry .
I do believe in abortion but not as a birth control method. I believe that any woman/girl that has been raped or molested has the right to an abortion. I am only saying this as a woman myself and if any of those two horrible acts were to be a cause of a pregnancy. It would hurt to know that even though that child even though so innocent was a product of a act that caused me harm.
now on to my opinions of the above link
first The bishop is wrong on so many levels. I know that certain faiths forgive crimes but for a father to molest/rape his daughter is not forgivable. Its taboo and its a sin.
second I do not believe that everyone involved in the abortion should be banished from their faith. They were only looking into the best interests of the child. The doctors knew what could of happen if she did carry those babies.
third I think the only ones that should be banished from the church is the ones involved with the court order to stop the abortion. This girl did not ask to be raped by her father or did she ask to get pregnant these acts were forced upon her. If she was forced to have the babies it could of caused so many problems including death, mental and physical problems in the future for her.

Strange that I came across this today.
Today the students at school, for some strange reason, had red duct tape taped to them, with different anti-abortion slogans on it. It was getting on my nerves. One that really irked me was "It's God's decision." Being a catholic myself, as far as i remember, God gave us a mind and free will...but anyways.
Aside from being disgusted at this news, I should show some of the anti-abortion students this.
Abortion is only wrong in certain circumstances. But to force a child to have their own child...that's just wrong.

Whenever I see a girl wearing a red strip of duck tape across her mouth, I just want to ask her questions like, "If you were raped and it turned out that carrying the child would do you harm, and the child would not likely to survive, would you still choose to continue?" "If you found out through a scan that your child is deformed and will not survive outside of the womb, would you continue?" They just like to see things in black and white with no shades of gray. You could choose to drop the child off for adoption, but why would you want to subject them to a life of rejection because people prefer to have Chinese babies? The planet is over populated enough, why add a new mouth to feed and a new polluter?

Vatican Official Defends Child's Abortion

By Francis X. Rocca
Religion News Service
Saturday, March 21, 2009; Page B07
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican's top bioethics official said the two Brazilian doctors who performed an abortion on a 9-year-old rape victim do not merit excommunication, because they acted to save her life.

The statement, by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, appeared as the lead article in last Sunday's issue of the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

"There are others who deserve excommunication and our forgiveness," Fisichella wrote, addressing the unidentified rape victim, "not those who permitted you to live and who will help you to regain hope and faith."

The case drew international attention earlier this month after the local Catholic archbishop excommunicated the doctors who aborted the girl's twin fetuses, as well as the girl's mother.

The child was 15 weeks pregnant, allegedly after being raped by her stepfather. Weighing only 80 pounds, she might have died if forced to carry the pregnancy to term, the doctors said.



While reiterating Catholic teaching that abortion is an "intrinsically wicked act," Fisichella suggested that under the circumstances, it might have been the lesser evil.

"Her life was in serious danger because of the pregnancy in progress," Fisichella wrote. "How to act in these cases? An arduous decision for the physician and for the moral law itself."

In contrast with church authorities' typically uncompromising statements on abortion, Fisichella stressed the degree of moral discretion that the doctors were forced to exercise.

"The conscience of the physician finds itself alone when forced to decide the best thing to do," he wrote. "A choice like that of having to save a life, knowing that one puts a second at serious risk, never comes easily."

The article did not explicitly mention the girl's mother, who was excommunicated for authorizing the abortion. Church officials have said the girl is not under threat of excommunication.

Another extraordinary aspect of Fisichella's article was its frank rebuke of José Cardoso Sobrinho, archbishop of Olinda and Recife, whom it accused of having "rushed" to declare the excommunications -- "a judgment as heavy as a meat cleaver" -- when his first task should have been the pastoral care of the victim.

Cardoso Sobrinho's action harmed the "credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of so many as insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking in mercy," Fisichella wrote.

Because church law requires the automatic excommunication of anyone who collaborates in an abortion, Fisichella wrote, "there was no need . . . for such urgency and publicity" in declaring the fact.

Fisichella's article also implicitly contradicted Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, who had publicly defended Cardoso Sobrinho's action earlier this month.

Vatican officials rarely air their differences in public, let alone on the front page of the pope's newspaper.

According to respected Vatican journalist Sandro Magister, Fisichella's article was probably approved in advance by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as secretary of state is considered the Vatican's No. 2 official, after Pope Benedict XVI.

After nearly two months of international controversy over the pope's decision to readmit a Holocaust-denying bishop to the church in late January, Magister called this case of crossed signals the latest indication of confusion at the highest levels of the Holy See.

"It is yet another sign of the disorder that reigns in the Curia," Magister said, referring to the church's international governing bureaucracy. "It shows that Benedict XVI is paying the price for refusing to reform the Curia."
Vatican Official Defends Child's Abortion

That's great! I certainly would hope that included the mother too.

Well guess somebody got told!

I just couldn't post on this before, about about to start spewing forth profanities right now as it is. There are no words horrid enough to describe a person that would do that to a child.

This doesn't surprise me at all, religion has never had to be reasonable, religion doesn't deal in reason. Saying that a rapist/child-molester's sins are forgivable, but a tortured child and the people involved in the saving of this child from pain and probable death are now damned... well that's just par for the course.

Religious institutions are trying to use the moral and ethical codes that were acceptable over a millennium ago, as if they were still prevalent today. Humans and the planet have evolved since then, changed numerous times over and over, but religion has desperately clung to the good days, when everything was awful coincidentally. Those involved in the saving of the girl are all probably deeply invested in the church too, which sucks. Something that was probably positive and important in their lives is stripped from them, because they had to make the right decision, and do what is best in today's world.

Good for the Vatican though, stepping up and making this statement, that's living in the now; an actual mixture of faith and reason.