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R/£ Mom excommunicated
... for letting her raped 9-year-old daughter have an abortionMarch 06, 2009 Edition 4
Sapa-DPA and Reuters
She was just 9. An age to be playing with dolls. But then last week she learnt she was pregnant with twins… and her life was at risk.
Their father was her stepfather and he had molested and raped her for years.
Her mother and doctors agreed she needed an abortion to save her life and on Wednesday she had one.
Less than a day later, Brazil's Roman Catholic Church gave her mother and the doctors its harshest punishment - excommunication.
Yesterday Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, who is in charge of the northeastern city of Recife, where the abortion took place, showed no compassion when he made the announcement.
"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."
But Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao has come out strongly against the church's ruling.
"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."
Abortion is illegal in Brazil, which has more Catholics than any other nation, but exceptions are allowed when the mother's life would be endangered or in rape cases where the woman has not passed her 20th week of pregnancy.
In this case, the girl was 15 weeks pregnant.
Olimpio Moraes, one of the doctors involved in the abortion, said the girl's circumstances had met both exceptions to the country's abortion ban.
"As doctors, we could not allow a girl of 9 to suffer like this or until she paid with her own life," he said.
Doctors said her life was at risk because of her young age and because she was pregnant with twins. The pregnancy was discovered last week when the girl complained of dizziness and pain.
She then told her mother and the doctors she had been raped by her 23-year-old stepfather.
Police say the stepfather has been arrested and had admitted sexually abusing the girl since she was 6 years old.
According to the head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil, all the people involved in the termination of the pregnancy on Wednesday had committed "a serious crime", more specifically "homicide against two innocent lives".
The religious leader said the sanction also applies to members of feminist organisations that supported the abortion, and only excludes the girl herself.
Sobrinho, who belongs to the most conservative sector within the Brazilian Roman Catholic Church, said those who have been excommunicated will not be allowed to take communion or to receive other sacraments, although they may yet avoid going to hell.
"As long as there is time to redeem oneself, the Christian can still request absolution, if he truly repents and asks for forgiveness," he said.
The girl, whose identity was not made public, was recovering, and doctors hoped she could leave hospital within a few hours.
A similar case in southern Brazil surfaced yesterday.
Authorities in Rio Grande do Sul state told the O Globo newspaper that an 11-year-old girl allegedly raped by her stepfather is seven months pregnant.
The 51-year-old stepfather has been in jail since January while the girl is in a hospital for high-risk pregnancies and apparently will not have an abortion.
Despite the girl's young age, she wouldn't have been the youngest person to become pregnant.
A 5-year-old Peruvian is recorded in case annals as having given birth in 1939.
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