The case of the Brazilian child who was raped, impregnated, and then had an abortion has taken a predictable turn. Sensible, rational people saw this as a tragedy, but one with a simple partial solution: the abortion was necessary to save the life of a young girl who could not possibly bear the burden of an unwanted pregnancy. The Brazilian Catholic church saw it differently and excommunicated everyone associated with the decision. Then the president of Brazil took a public stand against the church's unjust decision. Now at last, we hear from the top of the Catholic hierarchy…and the Vatican sides with fetuses over children. No surprise there at all.
Somehow, a church that preaches about a god of love has turned into a tableaux of empty gilt robes, devoid of human compassion, dedicated only to the perpetuation of a dead dogma. The utilitarian argument that religion at least provides comfort to people in need ought to be extinct now.
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Hihi
Do we actually know what's happened to this girl (and let's not forget her sister) now? or the rapist father come to that, is he going to be locked up?
We're hearing a lot about the decisions of the brain dead clerics but little about the welfare of the kid concerned..
Was the rapist step-father excommunicated?
What smokes me is that the RC church has absolutely nothing to say regarding the father - and I mean above and beyond the already imbecilic statements they've already made.
Of course not! They can probably recruit him into the priesthood after he says a couple of Hail Marys.
The step father was not excommunicated.
"A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life." Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho
It's exactly what I expect of a bronze-age Zombie cult.
@Reverend #2:
No, he wasn't because the he isn't Catholic.
The RCC excommunicates the girl and the doctors involved in saving her life.
These people just disgust me.
I can't help but believe the stance of the RCC in this matter will drive more people away from it.
If the step-father had been a priest, the priest would have quietly been reassigned to a different parish, the girl would quietly have had an abortion, the catholic church would make sure that the press says out of it, nobody would be excommunicated and eventually the pope would apologize for any abuse by clergy and ask for understanding since, after all, priests are also sinful humans and then go on preaching about the sanctity of life while ensuring that Africans don't get condoms while HIV kills 1.6 million Africans each year (1.5 "none-elevens" every day year after year).
What a hypocrites.
How deceptive to claim that "natural" law (the man-made laws for their main-made god) supersedes civil law.
The roman catholic church is immoral.
Isn't it clear by now that religion gets in the way of human dignity and morality?
It sort of makes me wish the Christians were right about everything. It would be gleeful fun watching that Pope meet his Jesus in Heaven. If Heaven has a version of Youtube, the interview would become an instant classic, and the title would start with "Pwned!!!1!"
Ugh.. Today was starting off so nice too.. though I'm glad to hear their president raising a fuss over it.
I mostly just want the fact this is becoming such a big deal to everyone force them to make an example out of the step-father and lock him up forever. I don't know how it is in Brazil, but in the US those kinds of criminals get eaten alive by the rest of the prison population.
The Vatican needs to have all their Bibles replaced with copies of "The Cider House Rules."
I'm glad I live in Venice and not in Rome.. I'd spend the day running around the vatican, shouting "fuck you!" (h/t Lewis Black)
It should be pointed out that there are over 1 million illegal abortions in Brazil every year. The RCC seems satisfied to accept this loss of what they call innocent life rather than pursue policies, such as wide spread use of contraception, to reduce it. This leaves them open to the accusation that they are more concerned about reducing the use of contraception than reducing the number of abortions.
It's noticeable that a lot of Catholic bloggers and pundits have kept very quiet about this one. Once the Vatican agreed, it stopped being a bit of local news and is now a general Catholic issue.
There must be Catholics who read this blog. What do you think? I'm asking the question sincerely. I'm an atheist, my immediate reaction is one of horror and revulsion. I don't see any ambiguity in this case at all (although, of course, for me excommunication would be as meaningless as sentencing me to the Phantom Zone - if I'm going to be punished, make it fictional, by all means).
But, and this is a sincere question, are any Catholics reading this willing to defend the church or conflicted at all?
Does the Catholic church ever actually do anything of use?
It seems to me that there are only two functions of the Vatican. They shed crocodile tears when their bilious god decides to send a personal invitation for a meeting to some peasant farmers via a landslide or earthquake. Or else, they sit, blue-balled and virginal, on their golden thrones wringing their hands about gender, sex, and abortion.
Would it matter if the entire bloody Vatican disappeared into a hole in the ground?
http://tehjuggernauts.blogspot.com/2009/03/it-is-seven-am.html
Yet again, men that are supposed to not EVER touch a woman decide that a CHILD should bear a RAPE BABY.
Catholics don't view women as human beings. They're just baby bakers. They want that child to have a miserable life, they wanted her to be submitted as a slave to a man forever. And hey, if she was fucked, it was probably her fault!
Anyway these priests prefer the young boys way more than ugly little girls.
They're like the Bush administration. They painted themselves in an ideological corner, instead of changing based on what's in front of them they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge it and cling to...to...to something. It's hard to admit when you're wrong. It's harder to admit you're wrong when you've already come out claiming to be infallible. "Okay, when we say infallible what we mean is..."
I was raised Roman Catholic, in Scotland.
Before I accepted that I was atheist, I used to wonder why my Mom (widowed when I was 10) had to scrimp and save, making soup with 'free bones' and the cheapest vegetables, while the parish priest was a well known drunk who 'enjoyed' his whisky. We could barely afford food.
He spent more in a day on whisky than our family spent in a week on food. Yet we still 'put money in the plate' every Sunday. It still makes me mad.
Thanks to UK social policies, our home was was relatively rent-free (means-tested), and we had free schooling - including 'grant-paid' university (again, means-tested).
Fucking Catholics were nothing more than parasites* then. Obviously nothing has changed.
*apologies to real parasites, and the important role many seem to play in population dynamics. Tehy have a 'place'. Religotards don't.
Speaking of: it seems to me the most graceful exit from the scene that remains for the Vatican is to get their sclerotic fingers out of public policy entirely, and morph with all dispatch into a really wacky haute couture design house...
Yes, you can argue their frocks, too, may be crimes against humanity. But they're already doing those anyway... And those are, at least, probably the lesser evil of the bunch.
I wonder where all those who wrote to you to express their displeasure over your 'desecration' of a biscuit are now. One would hope that they are currently drafting letters of condemnation to send up the top of the RCC, but somehow I don't think they are.
If this is the result of 'faith' how in the nine hells does most of society think that it is a virtue? To be blinded of empathy and fuelled by the desire to control, how they have gall to call non-believers wicked and full of despair is beyond me.
Well I suppose their actions here have caused me to be filled with despair for humanity...
It would be nice if the church would side against *rape* for once.
Would it matter if the entire bloody Vatican disappeared into a hole in the ground?
well the vatican museum and, in general, the architecture of the whole place are beautiful...
and in an unconnected but curiously coincidental development it turns out that Bristol Palin and her "fiancee" have split up. Shocked I tell you SHOCKED!!!!! And what about Tripp? Just the first arrow in the quiver.
@#10. Eric, heaven totally has the series of tubes!
Okay, I would jump in to save those...
"A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life." Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho"
This statement is true evil. It is so enraging, I'm chipping my teeth, I'm clenching my jaw so hard. Cold, naked misogyny wrapped up in feigned piety for imaginary babies. These people are vile.
That is so depressing...if those two can't make a relationship work, what chance do the rest of us have?
...because clearly preserving life is much preferable than preserving the quality of life.
Remember, this is the same church that preaches abstinence and pious destitution while practicing neither. What else could we expect from it than claiming absolute moral authority regardless of what effect those morals have? They don't have any investment in the matter at all, but claim to be in a position to judge others. The hypocrisy and overbearing morality runs deep here.
If I were or ever had been Catholic, I think it is events like this that would convince me to purposefully seek excommunication just so I can claim to have nothing to do with these assholes.
Quite a good one. We haven't been brainwashed into thinking birth control is evil, so we won't up getting shotgunned into engagement for the sake of our parents' political careers.
The sooner this religion/church stuff goes the way of the dinosaurs the better.
What about the judge?
Some reports on this story have said that a judge must grant an exception in order for an abortion to be performed legally in Brazil. Can anyone confirm if that happened here? Is the judge Catholic? (Seems likely.) Was he excommunicated?
If a judge did grant permission for the abortion, I predict he is Catholic and he wasn't excommunicated. I expect the RCC is happy to excommunicate doctors, but much more reluctant to alienate a judge who might actually excercise some power over the local church.
Of course, the whole excommunication thing is ludicrous. "You did something that our non-existent god says is bad. Now you don't get to go to non-existent heaven to be with non-existent god." Big whoop.
The RCC excommunicates the girl and the doctors involved in saving her life.
Technically, they did not excommunicate the girl, only her mother and the doctors. They "charitably" decided that she wasn't at fault.
So much concern for the innocence of an unthinking, unfeeling ball of cells - so little regard for the innocence of the very much thinking, feeling victims of rape.
I agree with an earlier poster.
For once i would sincerly hope that there is a god, and there is such a thing as a judgement day.
funny enough, a lot of "unbelievers" would go straight to heaven for... being GOOD people.. doing good things.. not being hypocrites.
But than again.. there is no such thing as heavenly justice.
We're here to deal with the hypocrites, liars, abusers, rapist. It pains me that most of them get away with it.. often "in the name of god"
I feel i'm going to puke now.
Irony detector service, ma'am. (Tips hat...) We're here to take a look at your equipment...
Oh, no no, it's no trouble at all. We've put on extra staff. Had to. The things have been blowin' up all over the place since the advent of the 'I get email' series...
Well, one small good thing about this (small comfort it may be, though) is that by going against the seemingly reasonably "...except in cases of rape or incest" thing, this incident can become a great advertisement just how out of touch the anti-choice crowd really is.
PZ said,
"Somehow, a church that preaches about a god of love has turned into a tableaux of empty gilt robes, devoid of human compassion, dedicated only to the perpetuation of a dead dogma. The utilitarian argument that religion at least provides comfort to people in need ought to be extinct now."
Great words PZ, you really need to working on your own book,or are you??
...you knew that I am a scorpion.
I think RCC is a total coward. After excommunicating the parents and the doctor, if they had any guts and any shred of consistency, they should have excommunicated the President and everyone else who endorsed the abortion. I would love to see the uproar and the following undermining of its current political prestige.
And in other news, the ground is still beneath our feet. Pictures at 11.
#41:
What I'd rather see is everyone Catholic who supported the abortion demanding to be excommunicated. That'd be hard for the church to ignore. It'd never happen, of course.
Any news from Grandma Palin? She was plenty loud during the campaign, using their engagement as evidence of strong family values. (hmmf!) What now?
[/offtopic]
We could call it an act of a loving and merciful God. ;p
Yes, PZ, you should publish. Your writing style is succint and your argument is well-honed. Something brief, coherent and, most importantly, sarcastic.
"A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life." Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho
And yet he is insisting that it would be better to let the 9-year old innocent girl die than perform the abortion and let her live. There was no way she was going to be able to give birth to twins - it's very likely that the twins and the girl would all have died.
Monsters. Crazy monsters. Days like this I wish I could still believe in a Hell, because then I'd have some kind of hope that these people could receive some kind of punishment for being the monsters that they are.
So a nine-year-old girl is not 'innocent'? nor is she 'life'?
Does anyone else see a parallel between this case and the woman in Italy who was in a persistent vegitative state? The Pope said (paraphrasing, here) "Keep her alive because she can still get pregnant and have babies." The the Catholic heirarchy, women are wombs, not people.
I checked in the two major papers in my region. there is no mention of this. oh, they mention the holocaust denying guy a little, but apparently trying to emotionally blackmail people into risking the life of a little girl is not newsworthy in a town that won't have atheist bus adds.
damnit! *succinct
It's worse than that, as I understand it. I believe that the medical opinion was that the girl was unlikely to survive the pregnancy, so what they're actually preferring is the preservation of their dogma over the lives of both the raped child and her unborn "children". They would rather all three die than allow one to live at the expense of their dogma.
@PZ,
Somehow, a church that preaches about a god of love has turned into a tableaux of empty gilt robes, devoid of human compassion, dedicated only to the perpetuation of a dead dogma. The utilitarian argument that religion at least provides comfort to people in need ought to be extinct now.
i wonder if you know about god of love. How do you know that ?
I wouldn't say attacks on Brazils church are unjust, but they are now pointless. Now that the pope has opened his ignorant old mouth on the subject Brazil is no longer the responsible party. Now every catholic in the world is at fault, so any hostility and contempt over this can be directed at Rome or pretty much anywhere else.
On some wingnut blog I skimmed last night, it was explained that it would have been OK if the fetuses had been delivered alive and allowed to die "naturally", 'cuz then it becomes a case of them dying as an unintended (albeit sadly necessary) effect of saving the mother's life, and that's different. Somehow. It's called the Principle of Double Effect. Whether the blogger is in a position to speak authoritatively on this subject, or whether the proposed "moral" alternative procedure was even medically feasible, I don't know. But it shows that the MSM are Big Meanies who like to beat up on the Catholic Church, and the doctors deserve to burn in Hell.
I was reading Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss' today, when I came across this bit:
"...these Christian ideas of confession and forgiveness - they place the burden of the crime on the victim! If nothing can undo the misdeed, then why should sin be undone?
The whole system seemed to favor, in fact, the criminal over the righteous. You could behave badly, say you were sorry, you would get extra fun and be reinstated in the same position as the one who had done nothing, who now had both to suffer the crime and the difficulty of forgiving, with no goodies in addition at all. And, of course, you would feel freer than ever to sin if you were aware of such a safety net: sorry, sorry, oh so so sorry."
It really is a fucked up system.
I cannot understand why the media is not covering this story more. It is an absolutely shocking statement by the Vatican.
If this cannot open people's eyes to the danger of religion then nothing can.
I am almost surprised nobody has put together a YouTube Excommunication Challenge.
There's nothing quite as simple and clear-cut as Holy Ghost blasphemy for excommunication, though, is there?
Their god was doing a fine f**king job of looking after the innocent up until then, wasn't he?
Arseholes, all of them.
Speaking of scorpions...
You forget that people are bad, sinful, and guilt-ridden from the moment they're born. People in general deserve whatever suffering that comes to them. Therefore, the little girl deserved to be raped because she is a sinner! I bet she even enjoyed it, because she's a little whore!
[awkward pause]
Pay no mind to the "popular opinion" that the stepfather is a scumbag pedophile rapist! We are the Church, and I assure you that we're right. God says so, and who can argue with God?!
[crickets chirp]
I actually felt dirty even typing that. Is this really the moral epicenter of Catholicism?!
Simple Simon the idiot Lieman, you seem to think we don't know anything about the bible or religion. That makes you an idiot. A lot of us were brought up in a religion, and then saw the idiocy of it. For example, take your "god of love" and compare that to the god of the old testament who condones the burning of towns, slaying of firstborns , and raping of virgins. We see the problem, you don't. That makes us smarter than you.
Seeing how the president and most of the population supports the decision, I suppose excommunication is a blessing for these people.
Now hopefully they're not so clueless as to continue to bring up their daughter in the church, despite being removed themselves.
This just goes to show how out of touch, out of date and inflexible their boring old 'divine command' ethics are. Someone earlier mentioned the Principle of Double Effect, where letting them die of natural causes is better than aborting them because your INTENTION isn't to let them die, so therefore you get a pass.
This is similar to a doctor giving a lethal does of painkillers to 'relieve pain' and skirt euthanasia laws. It's just a cheap way to try and deny that their ethics are OUTDATED and completely inappropriate to handle modern day issues.
If only the Virgin Mary had had a daughter...
"it was explained that it would have been OK if the fetuses had been delivered alive and allowed to die "naturally", 'cuz then it becomes a case of them dying as an unintended (albeit sadly necessary) effect of saving the mother's life, and that's different. Somehow."
Probably because, that way, there would be time to "baptize" the fetuses so that don't spend forever in hell (or purgatory? I forget which). The little girl was likely baptized already, so it would be okay for her die if things went wrong.
Lovely people. Really.
Simon is unable to muster any moral outrage about the rape of this young girl and her horrific treatment by the Catholic Church, because although there is a penis in the story, there aren't enough anuses or faecal matter for his taste...
That's not how I'd describe two fourth-month fetuses -- but they'd have died anyway, see comment 51!
---------------
simon (comment 52), read the very quote you included in your comment. Just… read it.
What do you expect, when you have an all-male organisation, supposedly chaste, decide how the lives of women should be run?
When you have a bachelor give advice to married people on how they should resolve conflict?
I have this image in my head: 3000-odd years ago, 'Prophets', i.e. unwashed loners who spent a lot of time alone in the desert, were really pissed when they couldn't get laid, once they wandered back into camp. So on the next trip round to the desert, that talking thorn-bush had a lot to say about a woman's role in life...
Well, this is the same church that's a lot more worried about its finances than it is about priests raping little boys. So- predictable, indeed.
prazzie @ #55:
And then, in the very next breath, the christians claim that atheists are denying god because we don't want to be held accountable for our sins!
According to christians, if you go around committing crimes all your life, then "accept Jesus" on your deathbed, you get to (imagine for a few brief moments that you are going to) heaven. Whereas if you live a blameless life, aware at all times that your actions have consequences, but never "accept Jesus", you end up (being imagined by others) burning in hell.
Something about this seems a bit wrong.
Sure enough; I was thinking more of abortion in general, than this case in particular.
#64:
Ah no, P-Benny recently decided that there is no such thing as Limbo for unbaptised children after all. It was invented 600 years ago as an exercise in mental gymnastics (loving god - dead babies straight to hell - does not compute - need solution, even if imaginary!) and now they admit they may have been talking out of their asses all along (can you say duh?). Got very little play, curiously.
Why don't the RCC excommunicate all citizens of Brazil while they're at it.
Surely I'm aligned with the Church this time. We can't kill the two little humans.
Simply remove them from the girl and implant in the Archbishop Cardoso, like in that Schwarzenegger film. All will be happy and maybe we finally found a good use for all that priests running around.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo#Limbo_of_Infants
And these people think that they function (or at least should) as the world's moral compass.
I spit on your view of morality.
If I had to be Catholic, I'd take a good look at the book, the hierarchy, the top dog, and come to the inevitable conclusions that:
1. The church is inherently evil.
2. God is inherently evil, probably because...
3. This Satan dude must be the one at the controls, receiving all the prayers. (The end times have come and gone.)
4. Satan must be laughing his ass off at how people worship, and...
5. Yeah, I got to admit it's pretty funny.
6. If he's got the light and the tunnel and the afterlife sorter still on, then I'm really, really not sure which destination I'd want.
"Unfair". Translation: stop questioning our right to be fuckbags.
What we need is an altarboy revolution. A little of the ol' switcheroo in the confessional'll help those uptight collared pricks loosen up.
What really ticks me off it that those cronies of Papa Benny the Rat seem to be unwilling to listen to the pretty clear argument that the poor child COULDN'T HAVE CARRIED THE TWINS TO TERM! Endangering both the life of the child as well as probably ending in an unviable premature birth!
Simon, I know more about Christianity and Catholicism than a fucking half-wit like you can even imagine, and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts I was a fuck of a lot more pious than you, you sniveling, coward. Fuckers like you who believe in God for purely selfish reasons disgusted me back then, and even more so today.
Any dipshit can be a mindless cheerleader: at least have the balls to stand up and love your faith by challenging it on occasion.
"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,"
So... the 9-year old wasn't an innocent person?!? She doesn't have the right to live? The doctors should have just let her try to carry twins full-term, even though it most likely would have killed her???
My rage is building...
Addendum... The only "advantage" (for lack of a better word) of this Vatican statement is that the Xians here (who are mostly Catholic) can no longer claim that "it was the sole opinion of a single person in a far-off country where they have no real feeling with the realities of modern society" (that's an actual argument I heard being made earlier this week)
"Simply remove them from the girl and implant in the Archbishop Cardoso..."
Or, better yet, in some convenient nuns. It's a win all around: the nine-year-old girl gets to stay alive, the fetuses get to develop into actual humans, the nuns get brownie points for doing a good deed, and they get to be mothers -- the ultimate goal of all women, remember? -- without having to do any sinful f*cking.
But I haven't noticed the Church offering prenatal adoption services yet, and I suspect I never will.
#16, B. Bummer: Would it matter if the entire bloody Vatican disappeared into a hole in the ground?
_____
It would matter to the earth. It would get very ill and vomit the fetid mess back up, probably keeping the good bits, like the architecture.
As if the twins would have had the slightest chance of surviving in the womb of a nine-year-old...
It's sickening what the church's argumentation is. That they had no choice. Because it's the church's law.
That's just what Adolf Eichmann said when questioned about his role in the holocaust: It was order from above...
Simply remove them from the girl and implant in the Archbishop Cardoso
I occasionally suggest to pro-life men that if they'd be willing to carry an embryo that is otherwise going to be discarded (i.e. a waste IVF embryo) I'd be willing to write the clinical protocol, find someone to implant the embryo on their intestinal vasculature, and follow them through the pregnancy. No takers so far. One guy told me how disgusting the idea was, but mostly it just gets ignored. I don't understand! It's almost as if pro-life men aren't willing to take risks for their beliefs...
Nangleator @76:
Actually, I was raised Catholic. And eventually my thought processes went something like this:
1. By Church teaching, God is all powerful
2. By Church teaching, God is all knowing
3. By Church teaching, God is all loving
4. Given 1,2 & 3, why do famine, pestilence and natural disasters occur?
(cleaned up to account for the fact that it took reading other authors to finally put my thoughts into words).
But yeah - that thought process pretty much made me an atheist towards the Christian God. I suppose I'm "agnostic" towards the idea of another kind of god - the idea that in fact Loki is in charge of our world and it's all a big laugh to him, or that the gibbering mad-god Azathoth is in charge and the guy running things is insane. But even if you showed me proof that a god existed, I'd never be able to believe that it was the Christian God taught by the Roman Church - not given the world he supposedly created.
The good ol' craptastic church still has the record of kills. You can't top the thousands of years they have been killing anyone that gets in their way. A very early sponsor of sporting events. They backed a few crusades to arrange payment for their sporting events? Oh, and thanks for the dark ages too. The victims knew how to help end it. Can't do that, too much profit!
Just to further the discussion a bit.
The pregnancy was discovered at 4 months. What if it had gone undiagnosed by a doctor until 8 months? What would have been the best solution then? I don't have an answer to this, which is why I'm asking.
The Church preaches love for souls, not material human beings. As one pope said -- Kill 'em all, and let God sort them out.
You deeply misunderstand Christianity if you think that, in bulk, it's about love for apes with opposable thumbs.
Way to go LuLa!
The Cracker people will become soon irrelevant.
What if it had gone undiagnosed by a doctor until 8 months? What would have been the best solution then?
It depends...was it discovered because the girl was in heart failure from volume overload and had a ruptured uterus? Then the best alternative would be to get the fetuses out, dead or alive, as quickly as possible and with as little trauma to the mother as possible. Which might well be a D and X if she was too unstable for major abdominal surgery or the stress of labor.
An emergency "late term" abortion, J.D. Mack, which only happens when the pregnant woman's (in this case, a nine year old CHILD) life is in danger.
That would have been appropriate. Across the board. Now, if they were far along enough to maybe live outside of her, then an emergency, early C-section would have been appropriate.
However, considering her youth and size, I very, very, very much doubt it would have taken any longer to realize she was pregnant/something was wrong.
And yeah, pretty much what Dianne said. If it had gone undetected any longer, her life would have likely been in serious danger, so the decision for an emergency abortion would have been easy, I'm sure.
PZ, you misspelled guilt ;)
(grammar nazis: Please note the smiley. I know what gilt means)
What really ticks me off it that those cronies of Papa Benny the Rat seem to be unwilling to listen to the pretty clear argument that the poor child COULDN'T HAVE CARRIED THE TWINS TO TERM! Endangering both the life of the child as well as probably ending in an unviable premature birth! (Seeker @ 78)
Now, now. That would require him to address his attentions to gynecologic details--an obvious occasion of sin.
I've had such arguments. The problem with many moderate Catholics is that they really don't buy into papal infallibility, so they feel free to disagree with the Church's stance on whatever. Being generally a guilt-ridden people, they're dimly aware that their progressiveness makes them water-ass Catholics, and as such, they feel compelled to defend their faith by assuming that no-one listens to the Pope anyway, so all the meanies criticising the Church's policies (which they don't follow anyway) should shut up.
I've seriously been told by gay-marriage supporting, pro-choice Catholics that the Church should be able to proclaim what they want and noone should say anything to them in return. They refuse to understand (because then there'd be implications to their faith) that the Church's power is such that not all feel the same freedom to disagree.
The point is that the nine year old girl wasn't capable of carrying the twin pregnancy to that stage. The abortion was medically necessary, let alone morally justifiable.
What would happen in the case of a rape pregnancy proceeding without complications to eight months? Then, the children would almost certainly be born, and the world would have to cope with the consequences. For the mother. For the children. The family. Society.
Children are born from rape all of the time and all over the globe. Those children, as for their mothers, have no real choice in the matter. A child resulting from rape should not be inherently less valued by society, and nothing of the sort should be implied by a decision to terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape. I don't think that anybody here was taking a moral position against infants born from such circumstances; the abortion was simply a necessary medical intervention. The moral judgement is being passed on the behaviour of the Catholic Church in the aftermath.
I'm fairly sure the RCC has stepped up it's culture warring in recent years. I don't know if it's down to Joey Rats himself or just that liberal and left-wing movements within the church are now all but dead. They war in Brazil over abortion; they war in Spain over gay marriage; they war in Brussels that they don't get listened to enough.
This whole thing seems like a decent trade-off to me. The girl was able to get the medical procedure she needed to save her life, at the cost of an imaginary punishment. I'm sure there is real stress and anguish involved here, because I don't doubt that the people who were excommunicated believe the baloney they have been fed all their lives. But the upside to the exchange is that the RCC is made to look like cruel and heartless villains on the world stage.
The church is really in a no-win situation here. Either they let the doctors and the girl's mother off free, and thereby publicly and hypocritically violate their own 'laws', or they do what they did and excommunicate the people, and end up looking like mustache-twirling cartoon bad-guys.
First: the girl wasn't excommunicated because she is not yet of the age of reason, meaning she can't make the decision herself.
Second: the stepfather is not in a state of grace unless he has confessed his sin, and any maginally decent confessor would require him to face the music and be punished for his crimes by the lay authorities before he could be absolved.
Third: "unfeeling ball of cells" - yes still a life and still a child (no quotes on child). ALL life is sacred and yes these children had the right to live. A life is a life from the moment of conception. If were are to argue for human rights, those rights must include even those who are the least human, even mearly a fused cell.
Wow, some dumbfuck actually showed up to defend this shit.....
Nope, if I can't take a picture of it with my camera without invading someone's body, it isn't human. It's becoming human, but isn't there until it is in the human environment, which means outside of the womb.
"The utilitarian argument that religion at least provides comfort to people in need ought to be extinct now."
Amen.
An abortion was such an obvious and clear choice, I'm not even sure what "option 2" could possibly have been.
"Let the rape victim die! I bet she was dressed suggestively!".
I exaggerate, obviously, but we actually HAVE HEARD that line in the past.
I'm hoping for a silver-lining, that this incident leads to tens of thousands of deconversions. Turn your back on this group of charlatans, people.
By the way, PZ, happy belated birthday. I know this is way O/T, given what I said above, but seein' as how you and I are virtually the same age, and I had it gift-wrapped already, well, here you go:
Truman.
Enjoy.
I´ve just read in Folha de São Paulo (one of Brazil´s biggest newspapers) that the rapist stepfather was indeed imprisoned and that he attempted suicide last week, but was saved by his cell mate. Here´s a link to the story (in portuguese, unfortunately I have no time to translate at the moment): http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/folha/cotidiano/ult95u533214.shtml
Only now that his horrible deeds are out in the open does the bastard start to regret what he had been doing for a few years to this poor girl and her mentally ill older sister... And stil, this isn´t evil enough to warrant an excommunication from the RCC. Who knows, maybe they consider a suicide attempt worse than rape, what with their amazingly illogical beliefs.
So ... the nine year old girl -- who got pregnant from NO CHOICE OF HER OWN because she was RAPED -- doesn't have a right to live? Two unborn fetuses who would KILL HER if they had been allowed to go full-term are more important than the LIVING, BREATHING child that was carrying them only because she was RAPED?
Are you kidding me, alsoAVSN?
A fetus isn't a person.
Nerd @ 102
There are noninvasive ways of imaging the interior of the body.
The church's position is not only unethical: it's impossible. In a case of a 9-year-old bearing twins, the loss of life is inevitable; therefore _no_ pro-life options applied. In this case, pro-life policy was _nonexistent_.
This is a special case of a general rule: TANSTAAPL: that is, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Pro-Lifer. This is true in the same sense that there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Given the economic limits on all life, all choices ultimately involve denying resources to someone somewhere, resulting in loss or limit of life. Most people close their eyes to this tragic dilemma by focusing only on those close to them, and letting the rest of the human race fend for itself. This is known as 'parochial altruism', or more bluntly, 'hypocrisy'.
This is obvious for people against abortion but for guns and warfare; but it even applies to, say, a 'seamless garment' nun against abortion, guns, war, and exploitation, yet willing to depend upon - of all people! - the Catholic church, with its checkered history.
Show me a pro-lifer, and I will show you a hypocrite; somebody willing to make exceptions for convenience's sake.
Anonymous, that doesn't matter. Guess what. The bible says that a baby isn't a person until it is one month old. I just use the concept that it is fully human when it is breathing on its own outside of the womb.
At least, we now not all catholics suport the vatican:
Washington, DC - Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, issued the following statement regarding the Brazilian bishops' claims of excommunication in the case of the nine-year-old girl who had an abortion after she was raped.
"Last week, the Brazilian bishops shocked the world when they condemned a nine-year-old girl and her family after she had an abortion. The young girl was pregnant as a result of rape by her stepfather. Under the current law in Brazil, abortion is permissible in the cases of rape or when the woman's life is in danger. This case falls under both exceptions as it would have been nearly impossible for the girl to carry the twins to term with her immature body.
"Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding this case, the hierarchy of the Catholic church in Brazil showed a tremendous lack of common sense and compassion when they stated that the girl should have carried the pregnancy to term, suggesting that her life would not be in danger if she had a cesarean section. They even went so far as to call for the excommunication of the girl's family and her doctors. Adding insult to injury, top Vatican officials have supported the Brazilian bishops in their actions.
"Instead of condemning a child and the people trying to take care of her, the Catholic hierarchy ought to focus on social justice in advocating for an end to violence against women and girls, supporting a preferential option for the poor and standing for women's health. The hierarchy's obsession with abortion is acting as a blinder, preventing them from seeing reason and standing for justice in difficult circumstances.
"Oceans apart but with the same disregard for women's health, Catholic bishops and the Vatican are predictably up in arms lobbying the government against easing restrictions on abortion laws in Spain. Parliamentarians are preparing to consider revisions to that country's strict abortion law, which only allows women to end pregnancies up to 12 weeks in cases of rape and 22 weeks in cases of fetal malformation, or with a doctor's certification that the women's health is in danger. The Spanish bishops oppose the decriminalization of abortion and liberalization of its availability despite the fact that a majority of Catholics support abortion rights as well as a variety of efforts, including contraception, that help prevent the need for abortion.
"Whether in the terribly sad cases like we saw in Brazil, or, as in Spain, where parliamentarians can improve public policies to respect women as decision makers about their health and lives, there will always be a need for abortion. Catholics for Choice calls upon all policy makers, to support the right to safe and legal abortion for women who need it."
This borders on the surreal. The methodology used by parasitic organizations like the Catholic Church to keep people under its control is to undermine their intelligence and erode their confidence in decision making. Keep them preoccupied with arbitrary and counter-intuitive rules, and you keep them off-balance and pliable.
The Vatican seems to be going all-out these days in a determined attempt to shore up its base—those more susceptible to authoritarian control—by dispensing its dogma with renewed inflexibility. And the message is clear: you are not important; following the rules is important. Empty your mind and focus your attention on the spinning Jesus . . . you will submit.
...Eliza?
What a bunch of evil loonies. We have done ourselves a great service here by leaving churches, convents and monasteries empty (mean age there around 80 years old), and starting to charge them the normal fee for electricity so that some churches have to be sold out to become condos and theaters.
See, they wouldn't dare excommunicate anyone here. This is not even talked about here in our news. Hell, if they started excommunicating every woman who takes contraception or had an abortion here, they would be left with less than 10% of women, most of whom don't take the pill because a)they're already sterile or b)they can't take it for health-related reasons.
Every time some wacko here pines about people here having no more faith, I point out what those evil barbarian monsters do in countries where people still listen to them, and how lucky they are to live in a more enlightened place.
For a potential person is of more value than an actual woman, or in this case, a girl. How very humane of you.
How do you propose to save all of the zygotes who never develop to be people. There must be some way to saving those mass of cells that somehow never got attached to the walls of the uterus.
It's been many years since my Catholic indoctrination, but my recollection is that seven is the age of reason.
I have no opinion on or interest in a state of grace.
No, I don't think "life" right after conception is entitled to more rights than a person who is here now, for example, the right to live in a woman's body against her will.
There is no room for pragmatism in your morally absolute world, is there?
Without the abortion, three (by your definition) children would be dead. With it, two are dead.
marilove@106
Did I say the girl had no rights? No, I did not. Do not put words in my mouth. I do understand the reasons for the decision, and don't disagree with them. My opinion is that a life is a life from the moment of conception, and that all humans have rights, regardless of what stage of life they are at. I do know that sometimes our rights are not always going to be respected or upheld, and that sometimes one persons rights may be asserted over anothers.
AVSN, #117: My opinion is that a life is a life from the moment of conception, and that all humans have rights, regardless of what stage of life they are at.
Well, it is my opinion that fetuses don't count as "humans" in the sense of having human rights, and so there is no moral quandry here.
Steve at #15:
A significant number of practising Catholics simply regard the Vatican as an embarrassing nest of self-serving high-livers who are completely out of touch with The Real World. That's probably why a lot of Catholics-on-the-street haven't said much - they can see this announcement is inhumane and indefensible.
But I agree, the professional columnists and self-styled opinion-formers of the Catholic community have been inappropriately quiet. It's a "which mast do you nail your colours to?" question.
I went to private Catholic school all the way until graduation from high school. I remember that in high school we would have weekly mass in the gymnasium. Generally the seniors sat in folding chairs on the basketball court and the rest of the classes sat on the bleachers.
One day the preist asked everyone if they knew why the seniors sat on the court, giving an appearence of priviledge? I guess most thought as I did and just chalked it up to them being the senior class. The priest answered the question by telling everyone to look up at the ceiling, so we did. It was in bad shape but that was unsurprising since the building was almost fifty years old. He then went on to explain that the reason the seniors sat on the court instead of the bleachers is that, as seniors the school wasn't going to get as much money out of them from tuition, if the ceiling collapsed it wasn't that big of a deal.
The priest passed it off as a joke and everyone had a laugh, dutifully or otherwise, at the senior's expense. Still, looking at how the Catholic Church operates I think there was a bit of seriousness in the priest's remark, at least in the underlying outlook. It shows also in their rhetoric against things like abortion and birth control, although it is laid out in all of its sickening glory just a little bit more in the case of this little girl.
Chiroptera @ 118
>BIG DISAPPOINTED SIGH<
no, just another sorry attempt to be nasty and start a lose-lose argument. No dice. I agree to disagree as always.
AVSN@117
You say that all humans have rights. How far are you willing to take that? If you had to kill a dog to save a human zygote with 4 cells, would you? Would you do it with an axe? Would you do it with gasoline? What if you had to make a choice between saving one nine-year-old girl or saving two fetuses?
I'm honestly curious. Is every human life worth exactly the same amount? Is a 98-year-old concentration camp administrator, who is going to die in fifteen seconds from emphysema, worth the same as a five-year old boy?
No it ain't. It has much more in common with a tumor. Immature cells with human DNA growing parasitically, drawing sustenance, in another living, breathing human being. I agree that it's not a tumor, but it is parasitic, and it puts the life of the host at risk, whatever her age.
Therefore, the choice rest with her, and for the case of that child, with her legal tutor, to put her life at risk. If not, then come here and give me that extra kidney, 'cause my life is at depends on it and it's more important than your quality of life, and the risk for you of donating a kidney are acceptable (to me).
Second, "life begins at conception" is a lot of hogwash. Even your bible doesn't say so. It says at baby is considered alive and human 1 month after its birth. Another thing is that it is very frequent that fertilized eggs, for unclear reasons, don't implant, even thought they are healthy. And even when the implantation succeeds, 1/4 of them spontaneously abort within the first trimester, making your lovely god the greatest abortioner of all times.
As a mother of twins, I just have to chime in how physically impossible it would be for a 3rd grader to carry them to, really, anything approaching term. If you've never known anyone who carried multiples, you simply cannot imagine just how much space they take up.
By the end of my second trimester I already had people asking me if I was due "any day now." Imagine their faces when I said, "no, I'm only at 24 weeks." I had my children at 38 weeks (considered full-term for twins), my fundal height was 47cm. And I was a full-grown woman. Twins are not "normal." Our bodies were not designed to have multiples. I know from personal experience.
I cannot think how a little girl could safely carry twins even to the point of viability. I really can't.
Look people the only medical opinion the Church is interested in is those of the medical panel who rules on which statistical outliers constitute medical 'miracles'. The doctors got excommunicated not just for the abortion but for not having enough faith to put the matter in the hands of god. Ditto the mother. The abortion was simply the consequence of that sad loss of faith. So you see they can't take communion until they show they have enough faith. The logic is quite simple, they may be many things, but deficient in logic the Jesuits are not. You may argue with the premises, but from them they are acting with perfect logic, and nil humanity. And they call us atheists soulless.
I foresee a family being way less religious. The Pope needs a reality check.
A fetus is not a person. Period.
Could you kindly explain what rights you believe a fetus to possess?
Full-term for twins is 9.5 months, Katrina? I didn't know that...
I'm an identical twin. We were born by C-Section about two weeks from 9 months. "TIME TO GET OUT NOOOOOW!" was basically how it went. I was just about 5 lbs, and my sister was a little under 5. So that's 9+ lbs. of baby, right there.
Regardless of whether a foetus is a person, it was clearly necessary here to perform an abortion. As I understand it, had the pregnancy continued to term, both the girl and the babies would probably have died in the process of childbirth. Better to lose two lives than to lose three. The doctors were simply acting according to good medical judgment and common sense, IMO.
That kind of transplantation is not currently possible. And will stay so for some time, I imagine, unless maybe if you transplant the whole uterus or something.
So, as comment 108 says: the fetuses die with or without the little girl.
5. By Church teaching, God is ineffable.
Which is a synonym for untestable. So I just walked away (mentally).
All primates have opposable thumbs! (Unless the thumb is lost.)
You've misunderstood the dogma. It doesn't say that anything a pope says is automatically infallible. Only carefully selected statements, made once or twice a century, are supposed to be.
All life is sacred? From the bacterium to the redwood? I'm OK with that for some values of "sacred"; I believe it is all worthy of awe and respect but you seem to go on in rather absolute terms about us not killing this sacred life. That must get rather unworkable for you - unless of course you are asserting that human life, even when it is yet to have any ability to suffer, is somehow automatically more worthy of protection than non-human life (even when that non-human life is better able both to suffer and reason).
Is there any Christian argument that doesn't reduce to "If things don't exist as Platonic absolutes then they can't exist at all"? At what point did our pre-human ancestors acquire these all-or-nothing human rights? Could it be that actually, while important enough to be worth dying for, human rights are "mere" human abstractions of "not being a dick"?
I agree 100%. My personal definition of 'personhood' would also include some other animals besides humans. Simply being human or a ball of human cells does not make you a person. In this case, potential persons lose out to the very real suffering and consciousness of a fully formed, mentally aware 9 year old person.
This is a fascinating case (and by saying that, I don't mean in any way to diminish how horrifically tragic it is): Even if you stipulate the position of so-called pro-lifers that life begins when sperm meets egg and that every embryo or fetus has the same rights as any born children, this case still involves not just one but two separate widely accepted exceptions to prohibitions against abortion: rape/incest and life-of-the-mother. I don't know anything about abortion politics in Brazil, but in the U.S. the vast majority even of adamant abortion foes would accept one or the other of these as a justification for abortion.
Mind you, I've always thought the rape/incest exception was whack: If you really believed that a fetus was a child with full rights, you would never countenance killing it for its father's crimes, no matter how sympathetic you were to the mother's emotional trauma or the disruption of her life.
Saving the life of the mother, though, is a whole 'nother kettle of horses of another color: If instead of fetuses, the twins in this case had been 19-year-old street thugs with knives or guns, nobody would dispute the moral right of an adult to kill them if that were the only way to stop them from killing an innocent 9-year-old girl. In fact, an adult who saved a young girl's life in such a fashion would probably be celebrated as a hero...
...so tell me again why Brazil isn't having a frickin' parade to honor this girl's doctors?
AVSN said:
"First: the girl wasn't excommunicated because she is not yet of the age of reason, meaning she can't make the decision herself.
Second: the stepfather is not in a state of grace unless he has confessed his sin, and any maginally decent confessor would require him to face the music and be punished for his crimes by the lay authorities before he could be absolved."
1. Yeah, um, I'm pretty sure 7 is the age of reason. So, technically, the church should have excommunicated the little girl as well, for being old enough to decide to have an abortion. So... why is that little bit of doctrine suddenly okay to ignore here?
2. So let's assume he confessed his sin like he was supposed to and is now in a "state of grace." How is this okay? The idea that no matter how heinous your actions, you're instantly forgiven just by confessing is just unbe-freaking-lievable to me. How about taking some goddamn personal responsibility once in a while and actually trying to be a good person? And, while we're on the subject, shouldn't the incredibly self-disciplined men on the planet who somehow manage to refrain from raping and impregnating 9-year-olds get a little credit from the RCC. It is so incredibly mind-boggling that a non-rapist atheist or non-Catholic isn't considered to be in the Church's stupid "state of grace".
This story makes me want to throw up.
marilove,
Term for singletons is 40 weeks. 38 for twins, 36 for triplets, etc. Give or take two weeks for each.
My kids were nearly 6 lbs. each (2665g and 2637g). Plus two placentas, plus double my blood volume. Three weeks after I had them, I'd lost 25 lbs.
How tiresomely predictable. Yet for some reason we the Godless are the amoral ones. You can't get much more amoral than outsourcing your moral responsibility to a higher power. God, the ultimate scapegoat for all your nasty little prejudices.
In Brazil, abortion is illegal -- except in cases of rape and when the mother's life is in danger. In this case of the 80-pound, 9-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather since age six, both conditions existed. Yet the Catholic Church didn't care that the child was raped. Too bad. Nor did it care if the girl would die. Yes, it's sad, but too bad. The Church excommunicated the distraught child's mother and doctors who performed the emergency abortion to save the girl. However, the rapist will not be excommunicated by The church.
Why are Catholics leaving the rapist alone and allowing him to stay in good-standing with the church? Ethic Soup blog has a theorgy that "the many, many pedophile priests in the Catholic Church must feel a bond with the rapist." You can read more at:
http://www.ethicsoup.com/2009/03/abortion-saves-raped-9yearold-girls-li…
AVSN, #121: no, just another sorry attempt to be nasty and start a lose-lose argument.
Huh? An attempt by whom? Not by me, since I just responded to your assertion of a moral "truth" with one of my own that is equally valid as sort of an invitation to try and develop an actual reasoned argument.
But I do notice that many people aren't capable of conceiving of morality without thinking that their notion of morality somehow reflects some deeper truth about reality rather than being the social (and legal) conventions that they are.
It's a wonder than anyone raised Catholic - even in the quarter-assed way I was - stays that way. Sex rules from celebate men in dresses and silly hats was great fodder for Monty Python, but that's the only good they've done.
Now they're kicking nuns out of convents so they can sell them to pay the settlement costs for child rape. (thanks to Skepchick for the link)
I'll have to get myself formally removed as a Catholic. As I gave it up for Lent years ago...;o)
Atheism seems so much healthier, in so very many ways.
[blockquote]Third: "unfeeling ball of cells" - yes still a life and still a child [/blockquote]
So you're saying that this:
http://www.molecularstation.com/molecular-biology-images/data/504/Blast…
Is exactly the same type of being as this:
http://www.babyslingsite.com/files/1842142/uploaded/Homepagebaby.jpg
Are you insane or just incredibly ignorant? (Note, one does not preclude the other).
SLW13@135
I will say having seen some of your previous comments I am loathe to respond.
Yes, I stand corrected re: the age of reason.
Now, you clearly didn't read my whole comment. I don't say the stepfather would be off the hook just by confessing. Guess even atheists can be myopic.
How about taking some goddamn personal responsibility once in a while and actually trying to be a good person?
Christianity is EXACTLY designed to get rid of personal responsibility.
Third: "unfeeling ball of cells" - yes still a life and still a child (no quotes on child). ALL life is sacred and yes these children had the right to live. A life is a life from the moment of conception. If were are to argue for human rights, those rights must include even those who are the least human, even mearly a fused cell.
Oooh, I don't think you should have said that on a board full of biologists.
Point one: Of course it is "life". So were the gametes that fused to make the embryos. So are bacteria. So are cancer cells. So are inflammed appendix cells. So what?
Point two: Do you then disagree with the current definition of "death" which is "irreversible cessation of brain function"? Because people can be and are declared dead while many, many more cells in their bodies are still alive than in a blastulocyst. However, both have the same number of working brain cells: 0=0.
Point three: We're discussing twins. I don't know whether mono- or dizygotic, but if monozygotic then they came from one fertilized egg. How did the one "person" become two?
Point four: Can you come up with a definition of "life" or "human life" that includes blastulocysts, but excludes brain dead people (unless you give another rigorous definition of death), unfertilized gametes, somatic cells, and transformed cells and defines monozygotic twins as two people but chimeras as one person AND (this point is critical) is based on anything other than simple prejudice? In other words, what biological, socialogical, or even theological grounds do you have for claiming that life begins at conception?
Point four: What are your feelings on early miscarriage? Up to 80% of concepti are miscarried, mostly within the first two weeks after conception. According to you, that means that 80% of people never make it to their second week of life! That sounds to me life a MAJOR public health problem. Are you up for funding it in accordance to its severity? It would mean defunding research into everything from cancer and heart disease to Tay-Sachs and infant leukemia and prevention of medical errors, but none of those kill nearly as many people, do they?
The step-father is beyond repulsive and doesn't deserve the chance of life he was given, the church should be ashamed not to condemn that man before moving onto the family of an abortie, but please for the love of all earthly things, can't the news stop reporting ALLEGEDLY! I don't know of any 9 year old girl who willingly would be sexually active. Of course she was abused dammit!
At least report the raped girl allegedly by her step-father.
The politically correct nonsense needs to stop already.
What is the AP afraid? Having to apologize to the wrong rapist?
alsoAVSN: if by "life" you actually mean a human being, and not a tumor or acorn, then you must support ready access to birth control materials and information for minors, yes? After all, access to such makes kids (adolescents) less likely to have sex; if they have sex, they are less likely to get pregnant (the couple, not just the girl), and if they get pregnant, they are less likely to have an abortion. Withholding birth control leads to more dead fetuses.
I mean, it's not as if your main motive is really to punish girls for having sex, right?
Oh no, I managed to read your whole comment. He'd have to see a confessor and be punished for his sins and blah blah blah. But is that the official church stance? You're only absolved once you stand trial and get punished for what you've done? That doesn't sound like the RCC we all know and love to hate.
Raivo Pommer
raimo1@hot.ee
OECD-Papiergeld
Der Satz ist kryptisch: Liechtenstein akzeptiere die OECD-Standards für Transparenz und Informationsaustausch in Steuerfragen und unterstütze die internationalen Maßnahmen gegen die Nichteinhaltung von Steuergesetzen. So teilte es die Regierung des Fürstentums mit. Hinter diesem Satz verbirgt sich jedoch eine echte Revoulution: Liechtenstein beugt sich dem internationalen Druck - und hebt sein striktes Bankgeheimnis teilweise auf. Damit will das kleine Land sein Image von der unkooperativen Steueroase abstreifen.
Mit den USA hat das Fürstentum bereits ein Abkommen geschlossen, wonach Informationen in Steuerfragen ausgetauscht werden können. Es tritt 2010 in Kraft. Damit wird deutlich: Das Land wird sich im Kampf gegen die internationale Steuerflucht künftig nicht mehr auf das Bankgeheimnis berufen.
Seit Juni 2000 steht Liechtenstein auf der OECD-Liste der Steueroasen. Auf dieser schwarzen Liste zu finden sind derzeit auch Andorra und Monaco. Schärfster Kritiker des Liechtensteiner Bankgeheimnisses ist Deutschland. Denn viele Deutsche haben versucht, über den Umweg Liechtenstein dem deutschen Fiskus Steuergeld vorzuenthalten. Prominentester Steuersünder war der ehemalige Postchef Klaus Zumwinkel. Dieser wurde im Januar vom Landgericht Bochum wegen Steuerhinterziehung zu zwei Jahren Gefängnis auf Bewährung und einer Geldstrafe verurteilt.
Unsurprised, but heartbroken just the same.
As I understood it, the only reason the rape victim wasn't excommunicated was because of her age. Nothing more. And good on the president of Brazil - he could have sided with the Church and political expediency, but didn't. As a parent, this whole thing has just made me so fucking angry.
Let me be a little more straight forward and less glib. I know that the Catholic Church requires penance for sins and before true absolution. But it was my understanding that that, officially, penance only had to consist of such things as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Plus, you have the added human factor of different confessors requiring different penance. You might think that the stepfather can only be truly absolved by confessing to the authorities and taking his lumps, but I doubt the Church authorities would take such a narrow view of the situation.
According to an article on Spiegel Online (in German), the stepfather cannot be excommunicated because he isn't catholic in the first place.
Kemist, #123: Brilliant!!!
AVSN, here's a thought for you.
When a man has sex resulting in successful conception, about 249 999 999 sperm -- every single one of them a living cell -- die in vain.
Here's an update - the doctor who performed the abortion was given a standing ovation at a national (Brazilian) health conference.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/03/11/brazil.rape.abortion/
The RCC's insisting that a 9-year old carry twins conceived from incest AND rape to term and then have a caesarian is about as obvious a demonstration of their absolutist dogma as you can get.
And the sloshing sound we hear is the RCC's influence in South America slowly swirling into the drain. Not fast enough for a lot of people!
...yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say that if we're arguing for human rights, those rights probably shouldn't include the least human organisms. What with them being not human and all.
The utilitarian argument that religion at least provides comfort to people in need ought to be extinct now.
Good post, PZ, particularly the quote above.
The methodology used by parasitic organizations like the Catholic Church to keep people under its control is to undermine their intelligence and erode their confidence in decision making. Keep them preoccupied with arbitrary and counter-intuitive rules, and you keep them off-balance and pliable.
Ramblin' Dude #111: Very good. Thanks.
"ALL life is sacred and yes these children had the right to live. "
The ACTUALLY LIVING little girl is infinitely more important than the imaginary babies in your head. What was done was done for HER benefit. How fucking dare you try to pretend there's any tragedy in this example. FOAD.
Excellent!
Excommunication is the reward for doing the right thing!
From the CNN article:
"Dr. Olimpio Moraes, one of the doctors involved in the procedure, said he thanked the archbishop for his excommunication because the controversy sheds light on Brazil's restrictive abortion laws. He said women in Brazil's countryside are victimized by Brazil's ban on abortion."
Joe Cracker, thank you for that. It is good to know that one of the persons effected by the story is going about this the right way. Hopefully, this ends up being an other step for sanity in Brazil.
In response to the update by EnfantTerrible (#154):
If the RCC has the foresight to acknowledge that should the twins be carried to full term they should be born by C-section, aren't they stepping on their god's toes. If this is the will of god that pregancies by way of insestuous rape be carried to full term, why intervene at all? I agree with EnfantTerrible on the point that this is an "obvious deomnstration of their absolutist dogma." But more than that, it betrays the notion that they don't really believe this grabage themselves, but they aren't willing to give up on their "righteous" power. Hypocrites!
joe cracker, #158:
I agree with janine. I was just thinking that one potentially positive result of this would be to discredit the anti-abortion side. It will be ironic if the result of this is that Brazil liberalizes its abortion laws.
It only takes one lax priest to absolve him, though. What's to stop him from shopping around until he finds someone who does? It's not like the other priests can inform each other that he is searching for a priest to let him off (sanctity of the confessional, and all that). So, even granting what you say is true, if this creep really cared about getting absolved, he could find a way.
As if you think that a child rapist cares about whether his soul is free from mortal sin before receiving communion...
What I Do Not Get Is:
Italy is filled with contraceptive-using, abortion-getting Roman Catholics-- I mean, it must be: Italy's fertility rate (children per family) is 1.2! Why doesn't the Pope go after the people he lives around the block from first, instead of picking on the poor masses who are half-way around the world and dont know any better to ignore the Big Hat?
Semi-OT, but who besides me wants to see a steel-cage death match between the Brazilian Bishops and RNC Chair Michael Steele?
Sadly, it is because the southern hemisphere is where Catholicism is growing now. They are working on the areas where they still have influence.
i wonder if you know about god of love. How do you know that ?
I think you guys have misinterpreted poor Simon; he's not saying there is a god of love. I think he's just pointing out that what the Catholic church teaches isn't a god of love, hypothetical or otherwise. It's a god of bigotry, obstinance, and cruelty.
Or I could be wrong and he could just be a fundie.
EnfantTerrible @154
That brought tears to my eyes.
There may be an upside to this whole sorry affair. This may be the tipping point--as was the Bush administration's interference in the Terrie Schiavo tragedy--that finally turns thinking people against the Catholic church.
While I have only skimmed the comments, I notice that some Catholic spokespeople have shown up and have told us that a human life is sacred from the moment of conception. Sorry, ain't that way in the Bible I read.
Take a look at Numbers, Chapter 5 verses 11-31. If a husband suspects that a wife has slept with another man (or he becomes "jealous") he is to take her to the temple where a priest will feed her holy water plus dirt from the floor of the temple. If she is guilty, God is supposed to make her thigh rot and her belly swell; if not, she will be OK and "she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children" (verse 28, New International Version).
So her thigh rots (whatever that means), her belly swells, and though she may recover she is not expected to be able to have any more children. Clearly, this holy mud is expected to act as an abortafacient. This "human life is sacred from conception" stuff is just a hypocritical justification for another level of mysogeny.
Posted by: Dianne | March 12, 2009 11:32 AM
I occasionally suggest to pro-life men that if they'd be willing to carry an embryo that is otherwise going to be discarded (i.e. a waste IVF embryo) I'd be willing to write the clinical protocol, find someone to implant the embryo on their intestinal vasculature, and follow them through the pregnancy. No takers so far. One guy told me how disgusting the idea was, but mostly it just gets ignored. I don't understand! It's almost as if pro-life men aren't willing to take risks for their beliefs...
Funny that.
I can only speak for the Campania area, but here the low birth numbers her have been linked to all the toxic chemicals in the ground water and soil. I don't have the data to back it up, but I was told that the women in this area who do manage to conceive run a much higher risk for birth defects, too.
Check out THIS comment where a religious nutjob thinks that a hysterectomy for the 9-year old girl is better than an abortion. Yup, unfortunately we Canadians have our crazies as well.
H/T to Canadian Cynic for perusing those sickening right-wing blogs.
Something I found particularly ironic is that they excommunicated the parents who did this out of love and care for her, the medical staff and doctor who saved her - but left her in the church WITH the rapist (and a bunch of child-abusing priests as a little extra).
Seriously? ... I mean, SERIOUSLY? These people are completely nuts.
*154
Yep the RCC is playing a blinder recently...what with ignorant and anti-Semitic Cardinals denying the holocaust and this ridiculous and tragic act down in RCC central...a few more beauties like that and the trickle of deconversion will be a flood...then they can pray to jeebus to save their sorry butts!
Totally irrelevant and amoral arseholes the lot of them...how anyone would have the bad luck or sense and utter stupidity to remain within this death cult beggers belief in any god...god's only brat or holy spook...they are an insult to cretins...but not to slime funnily enough!
Damned limoncello, hiding the keyboard keys.
That should say, "but here the low birth numbers have been linked..."
I'm not sure where "her" came from.
Premise Media's next film "Aborted: No Nine Year Old Rape Victim, Mother of Twins Allowed"
LOL
hey Michael. How's business these days? any new vids to share?
Sinned, that Suzanne is a piece of work. Also rather dismissive of what having a c-section can do. At no point should one talk about a c-sections as if it was not much. My mother was pregnant ten times. (I know, I know.) Eight births, one stillborn and one miscarriage. Most were relatively routine and even easy (If giving birth came ever be called easy.) with one being delivered in the parking lot of the hospital she was being driven to. But her last pregnancy almost killed her. My sister was breached and tangled in the cord, they had to open my mother up and the procedure almost killed her.
If we're going to entertain the notion that a fertilized egg is a "child", then we have to ask when being a "child" stops. Technically a child is a stage of human development between toddler and puberty. Since this 9 year old is capable of being impregnated, it could be argued that she is no longer a child. In some cultures, she'd be considered technically an adult. A disturbing thought isn't it?
I feel that human life starts with sentience. What the pro-"lifers" do is define us to a mere biological process without a mind or free will. I find that insulting to what it means to be human.
@172: Jesus Christ! I wish I could scrub what I just read from my brain.
Janine,
Yeah, I usually try to avoid Suzanne's blog, unless I'm really in a self-abusive mood. It's hard to distinguish the evil from the stupidity there, since they usually go hand-in-hand.
Guy Incognito,
That's pretty much what my response was, which is why I posted it here. Misery loves company!
Plus, it helps remind me of why I'm not a conservative anymore. That fact gives me (probably false) hope that those people will also someday come to their senses and learn to think for themselves instead of spending all their time trying to justify their horrid beliefs.
Bernard @16,
Or else, they sit, blue-balled and virginal, on their golden thrones
I am sure that is correct with respect to at least some of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. As for the rest, I am a liberal and so do not begrudge them what joy they may be able to find in this vale of tears, though I do wish they would learn to limit their amorous attentions to consenting adults.
Posted by: Bernard Bumner "Does the Catholic church ever actually do anything of use?"
I'm pretty sure many individual priests do, but lots don't. They run St.Vinnies.
"Would it matter if the entire bloody Vatican disappeared into a hole in the ground?"
Yes it would. They hold some of the world's most rare, important, incredible cultural artifacts, books (and scrolls and manuscripts), sculptures etc. in their jealously guarded museum. If you buried the Vatican, the world would lose all that. It would be like the burning of the Alexandra Library again. Of course it would be better if they gave people access to it more often ...
Understood. But next time, can you at least mark it with a 'May cause madness not unlike that caused by contemplating the existence of the elder gods*' tag thingy or somethin'?
Seriously, tho', I loved that bit about thousands dying in agony being better than someone committing a single venial sin...
Nice of that lot to provide so quotable and picturesque a summary of the rigid absolutism that makes them the complete and utter sickos they have now become. Hell--I'm not sure I coulda come up with a better and more galvanizing illustration of that particular madness even deliberately trying for provocative hyperbole...
Oh, on the other hand, okay, maybe I will try. But I'm gonna have to work from what they left there. It's too good to pass up, really:
'Yes, we razed the whole village, killed every single one of the thousand or so residents present by burning 'em alive. Napalm. Yes, ma'am, it stings a bit, but it gets the job done...
'Had to. We had positive intelligence one of 'em was gonna steal a cheeze doodle, and couldn't work out which one...
'It was better for everyone, see. A thousand agonizing deaths versus one venial sin, y'know how this works, people. We're saving souls, here.'
*Granted, MCMNUTCBCTEOTEG is probably a bit of a mouthful. I'm open to more concise suggestions.
Billy @48,
The Pope said (paraphrasing, here) "Keep her alive because she can still get pregnant and have babies."
No, I'm pretty sure that was Berlusconi, not Ratzinger. I'm no fan of popery, but in fairness to the current pontiff:
1) he didn't say that, and
2) he isn't to blame for the continued existence of AC Milan.
Mrs Tilton, you are right about the source of the quote.
Sarah P (#140) said:
"Now they're kicking nuns out of convents so they can sell them to pay the settlement costs for child rape."
Hey Sarah, how much are them nuns going for? I wouldn't mind picking up a couple for around the house.
Eamonn @54,
it would have been OK if the fetuses had been delivered alive and allowed to die "naturally", 'cuz then it becomes a case of them dying as an unintended (albeit sadly necessary) effect of saving the mother's life, and that's different
Sweet Zombie Jesus and His Sacred Difficulties with Smarties! The only thing worse than an erudite Jesuit apologist for RC fantasies is the wingnut blogger with the quality that (RC himself) Alexander Pope most feared, a little learning.
For starters, the principle of "double effect" is arrant jesuitry; I'd expect that a number of intellectual strains of RCism itself would spit it out in disgust as energetically as would normal people.
Second, even on the terms of the principle itself, once the twins had been excised, at full term, from the (still living, one hopes without any particular reason) body of their 9 year old mother, they couldn't simply be left to die.
Does this suppurating idiot actually think the point of getting an abortion for this horrifically abused child was to achieve the death of the foeti inside her?
DiscoveredJoys @ #63
If only the Virgin Mary had had a daughter...
Hear, hear.
I was baptized at 16 after coming to Catholicism in my teenage years. It all seemed to right and helpful. Ever since then, I've drifted further and further away from it. In recent months, I've disovered skepticism and began to actually think critically. My religious views were in danger as it was. This snaps it. F**k Catholicism and f**k anyone who can hold a belief that leads to the condemnation of a 9-year-old (9!) who got raped by her stepfather, impregnated, and had to (HAD TO) have an abortion to survive.
F**k the pope, f**k those bishops, and f**k the Vatican. It's over.
Oh, one general point. Is it really necessary here to make a BFD about the relationship, whatever it may be, between Sarah Palin's daughter and the father of her child?
The horrifying Palin herself is an electoral politician and hence fair game. She actively sought (and may yet seek again) dominion over free citizens. Her beliefs and values are therefore the proper subject of the most scorching possible examination by those citizens, and would have been even if those beliefs and values hadn't been as mad and mindless as, in her case, they were.
Her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend (former or not) and their child, though? Not so much. I hope that none of us wants to make pawns of them, or would wish them anything but the best.
Mrs Tilton: Is it really necessary here to make a BFD about the relationship, whatever it may be, between Sarah Palin's daughter and the father of her child?
Well, they do provide an interesting anecdote how teaching family values (which is presumably what Mr. and Ms. Palin did) does not necessarily lead to the rightwing culture warriors' conception of "proper behavior". I would agree that hard statistical data would be better, except that culture warriors don't seem to understand much in the way of math, science, or real life facts and can only understand things in terms of single anecdotes.
In fact (and I may be wrong about this), it was the McCain/Palin campaign that brought the young Palin into the discussion as an example of the importance the Palins' put on "family values." Although, ironically, the current situation now comes closer to the values of real life "small town America!"
But your point is taken. I, too, think that the young Palin should be allowed to live her own life in peace, and hopefully future culture warriors will refrain from bringing in their (and their opponents') families into the campaign.
Chiroptera @192,
In fact ... it was the McCain/Palin campaign that brought the young Palin into the discussion as an example of the importance the Palins' put on "family values."
Yes, but I'd hope we'd be better than that.
This is what happens when you value compassion less than the enshrinement of Unchanging Absolute Compassion. There are no unbreakable stone tablets, no inflexible shortcuts that absolve us from ultimate responsibility. It is adult to admit it.
If you buried the Vatican, the world would lose all that. It would be like the burning of the Alexandra Library again. Of course it would be better if they gave people access to it more often ...
neutron bomb?
poison gas?
lots of good options that would leave behind all the useful stuff.
Actually, the McCain/Palin campaign announced Bristol P.'s pregnancy only to scotch the rumors flying around at the time that Bristol, not the governor, was the mother of Trig Palin. (There are people who still smell something fishy about the whole thing.) The "family" spin came after.
This may have already been said, and I just missed it, but this case illustrates one of the most abhorrent sides of the RCC, in that the rapist step-father will be allowed to repent and be forgiven, while the (most likely faithful and pious) doctors who saved this child from undue agony and possibly death, along with the mother, will have no such chance. They are condemned to burn, while the rapist can say he's sorry and all is well.
Man, sometimes I can hardly believe I was ever a Catholic.
I enjoy the blog. Just a note, in case you read down this far in your comments: "tableaux" is plural. The singular, which you want in this sentence, is "tableau". Keep up the good work.
Roman Catholic Church != all of religion
Many faiths really try to practice what they preach about hope and love. Unfortunately, they are the quiet ones that don't annoy everybody else. It's sad that what little progress was made by John-Paul II in bringing the church out of the middle ages is being reversed by his successor.
Father prob would've been excommunicated assuming he were married :(. I hate religion, with a passion. Simply a plague on the whole of humanity
Posted by: darth_borehd | March 12, 2009 6:53 PM
I'd say that it is because they practice what they preach that they don't force their religion down everyone else's throat. But there are also religious groups that preach love and hope, while also proselytizing, for the simple fact that they are not required by their religion to love anyone who denies Christ - the unworthy, in their eyes. And moderates can do more damage than extremists in some cases, as MLK pointed out about 'moderate' whites during the civil rights movement and Dawkins and Hitchens point out about moderates in religion.
I came up in the RCC while John Paul II was trying to make his changes to the way the church does business, and this backlash does not surprise me at all. As evidenced by the Order of Pius jackasses, there were many, many Catholics - including a great deal of the College of Cardinals, who select each Pope - that fiercely opposed his reforms. So, it was no surprise that that same College of Cardinals elected a new Pope that is now rolling them back.
Regarding the concept of a fertilized egg being merely a "potential person" ... suppose one accepts that premise.
Why are people so concerned about climate change? Why do they want to save the planet?
For the sake of future generations. These future generations are not yet even conceived, let alone born. If anyone deserves to be called "potential persons" it's them - yet people are concerned to safeguard their (potential) wellbeing. So why not extend the same concern to the unborn?
Pilty, Unborn babies is an oxymoron and you know it. There is the fetus, which exists as a parasite within the womb, and a baby, which exists breathing on its own outside of the womb. Your semantics are wrong. Just like you normally.
Ooh, Piltdown Man, that's a nasty case of LogicalFallacitis you have there.
You really should get that seen to; it can really make your arguments sick.
Piltdown Man, #202: For the sake of future generations.
Well, it's not my reason for wanting to "save the planet," but let's assume that it's the main reason for most people concerned about the environment.
The difference is that there are definitely going to be people in future, and they will have to live in the mess we create now. But once a fetus is aborted, there is not now, nor will there ever be any person who is or will be harmed.
In the same way, I feel that a woman should be able to terminate her pregnancy whenever she wants for whatever reasons she has. But if she does decide that she wants to raise the child, she has, in my opinion, an moral obligation to take care of her and the fetus' health now so that the baby may be born healthy.
Did I explain this well enough? Is this confusing?
Nerd of Redhead @ 203:
I never used the word "baby". As a hypothetical exercise, I accepted the premise that the unborn were merely "potential people". I just wondered why some "potential people" seemed to be worth more than others.
So insofar as the foetus cannot survive independently, as long as it is wholly dependent on another being to survive, it is a parasite?
Is he a "parasite" then?
Pilty, they aren't people yet, and you know it. To be people, they must be outside of the womb breathing on their own, and over a month old. Read your bible. Potential is meaningless compared to the woman standing there. She is real. But, of course, to a idiot like yourself she is the meaningless one. And, while the fetus is in the womb it is biologically a parasite. To say otherwise is a lie. But then you godbots lie all the time.
Ehem. Luther's sola scriptura was a rebellion against the Catholic Church. Catholicism also considers tradition (apostolic tradition, remember) and quasi-Aristotelian logical extrapolation from the Bible and from anything that can be made compatible with it valid sources of dogma.
However, it is interesting in this respect that St Thomas Aquinas defined "human" as "looks like a human" and therefore didn't consider embryos to be persons...
No, that's not the case throughout all of Italy. In general, the men in Italy are still machos, while the women are already emancipated, so they don't get together that much anymore...
For the third time, the stepfather is not Catholic to begin with!
It is evil to comment on a thread without having read all of it first.
A mind isn't something that's black-or-white there or not there, either. And most commenters here deny the very existence of free will (though that may be a matter of definition)...
Would make everything inside radioactive or at the very least carbon-undateable. Poison gas, on the other hand... well, depends on which gas, but as long as you don't use chlorine...
For the fourth time, no, he's supposed to burn for eternity anyway.
For the fifth time, he's already ex to begin with.
#206:
"He" is not wholly dependent on another human being to survive. He is dependent on technology and certain social structures (which is functionally the same as technology)
That is the most pathetic false analogy I've ever seen.
Chiroptera @ 205:
Really? What is your reason?
And once global warming is allowed to destroy the planet, there won't ever be any future generations around to worry about.
amphiox @ 209:
Technology designed, created and maintained by human beings. Social structures made up of human beings. He is totally dependent on lots and lots of other human beings to survive - which arguably makes him more of a parasite than a foetus, which only depends on one person.
Woman (actual person) vs fetus (potential person).
A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.
Actual has greater value than potential, always.
We ought to seek compromise solutions whereby all considerations of value are appropriately preserved, but in the event of an insoluble conflict of interest, the actual person claims priority over the potential person, all the time.
I wouldn't go so far as to call the fetus a parasite, since the woman derives a definite benefit from its presence (at the very least, the fetus provides an opportunity for the transmission of genetic material to the next generation). I would consider it an obligate symbiote.
Nobody thinks global climate change is going to "destroy the planet." It may well cause some serious and tragic inconvenience to the currently dominant species, though.
That doesn't even apply here. What applies is the question if you want to end up with a dead girl or a living one -- both fetuses would have died either way, with or without the girl.
#210:
He depends on the collective activity of human beings, which is what technology and society are.
ALL human beings depend on this. ALL of us would shortly die a miserable death if we were suddenly denied this support line, even hunter gatherers.
This is the ecological niche of our species.
We, as a collective, are not harmed by his dependence on us. We derive great benefit from him and others like him.
We, as a collective, are not harmed by the dependence of each individual on our communal efforts, as each individual contributes to that communal effort. Our cooperative talent has been very, very good news for our species, and very, very bad news for most of our competitors, at least up to this point in time.
A parasite depends obligately on another INDIVIDUAL organism for its survival, and HARMS that organism.
Analogy fail. Episode two.
And once global warming is allowed to destroy the planet, there won't ever be any future generations around to worry about.
As someone already pointed out, that's not going to happen. There will be actual people, and the quality of their lives depend, in part, on what we do today.
Even if humans do become extinct, someone is going to be the last persons to be alive. If humans do become extinct due to destruction of civilization and/or environmental degradation, then their lives are likely to end in a miserable way.
Unlike aborted fetuses.
But you are right -- if the human race does become extinct, then we owe nothing to the "people" who will never exist.
Like aborted fetuses.
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM:
My bad - didn't catch that part. I should have said would instead of will. Knowing what I know of the church, I highly doubt they would have excommunicated him right off the bat anyway - would have looked kind of hypocritical to excommunicate him and not the pedo-priests. And besides, I wonder where the chance to repent went for the doctors and the mother?
#214:
One could envision any number of gruesome medical interventions that might have a chance of saving the fetus in this case. The chance might be slim, but not zero. And the chance that the girl might survive is also not zero.
So I wouldn't go so far as to say that the fetus would have been doomed no matter what.
It boils down to comparing a course of action with a very high chance of a dead girl and a dead fetus, a small chance of a grievously damaged girl and a live and probably damaged fetus, an even smaller chance of a grievously damaged girl and a live and relatively undamaged fetus, and a vanishingly miniscule chance of a live and relatively undamaged girl and a live and relatively undamaged fetus with another course of action in which a live and somewhat undamaged girl is very likely while the fetus is guaranteed to be lost.
One would think, naively as it turns out, that the decent moral choice is obvious.
I must say, though, given the available evidence in this case, that excommunication from the Catholic Church isn't really much of a punishment.
Almost a reward, actually.
People keep mentioning the "Principle of Double Effect" (starting with Eamon Knight #54), but what I don't see is a correct analysis of what it means. It's not "arrant jesuitry" at all; it's a principle that even doctors have to use to evaluate whether a risky treatment is warranted.
In this case, the Principle of Double Effect has an indeterminate analysis: one would have to somehow evaluate the quality of life of the family versus the possibility of life for the potential fetus. It's a comparison of apples to oranges where a strict comparison is needed. So, of course, the wingnut who originally brought the Principle of Double Effect into play (the person to whom Eamon Knight referred) is completely off-base in the first place.
Sorry, this get re-posted every time some pro-forced birther shows up.
Pro-lifers, here's the thing, you hate abortion. Got it. You consider it "baby murder." Really bad stuff. Got it. But it's not that simple.
Because here's the thing, what you are actually advocating here is not only "outlawing murder" but ALSO "forcing pregnancy and birth." You can't do the one without doing the other, not when we are discussing abortion.
Now, at this point you say, "Well, the women CHOOSE to become pregnant, by having sex, protected or not, THEREFORE, it is okay to FORCE them to remain pregnant and give birth. They have, by their actions of having sex, forfeited the use of their body to another for 9 months and their birth canal for a matter of hours. Well, except in the case of rape, but let's leave that out of the equation for now.
So, here's the thought experiment: A madman kidnaps a child and threatens to kill it in nine months. In order to stop the madman from killing the child, the man says, "In nine months, I will, at random, take a woman off the street, and, if she has had sex at any time in the last nine months, I will force a grapefruit into her vagina, a sort of forced birth in reverse. If she refuses, I will kill the child. Remember, I'm only going to grab a woman who choose to have sex in the last nine months, she was warned what would happen if she had sex, and the life of a child is at stake. So, let me force a grapefruit into the vagina of the women or I'll kill the child."
Now, the questions is, should the STATE, in the interest of saving the life of THE CHILD, FORCE the WOMAN to take the grapefruit in the vagina, because she had sex, sometime in the last nine months?
Because, that is, basically, what the anti-abortion/forced birth position is. Because a women choose to have sex nine months ago, the state can now force her to push a grapefruit sized head out her vagina, whether she wants to or not. As someone who just witnessed a pregnancy and birth, I can't understand how anyone could force anyone else to undergo such a thing against their will. such a thing would be called torture if we could inflict it on people at will. We usually call the unwilling use of a woman's vagina rape. But, the term "rape" does not do the actual reality of this situation justice.
Also, off topic but still having to do with Catholic amorality,
"Roman Catholic and Orthodox Jewish officials in New York are mounting an intense lobbying effort to block a bill before the State Legislature that would temporarily lift the statute of limitations for lawsuits alleging the sexual abuse of children.
A perennial proposal that has been quashed in past years by Republicans who controlled the State Senate, the bill is now widely supported by the new Democratic majority in that chamber, and for the first time is given a good chance of passing.
If signed by Gov. David A. Paterson, a longtime supporter, the bill would at minimum revive hundreds of claims filed in recent years against Catholic priests and dioceses in New York, but dismissed because they were made after the current time limit, which is five years after the accuser turns 18. Similar legislation has passed in Delaware and in California, where a 2003 law led to claims that have cost the church an estimated $800 million to $1 billion in damages and settlements."
From Today's New York Times.
Awwwwwww! The poor widdle Catholic church wants to be protected from its past sexual exploitation of children! My liberal bleeding heart, well, actually, doesn't give a rat's ass. If someone comes forward and makes false allegations, go to court and defend yourself. If the person has a proper claim, pay them for the suffering you caused rather than hiding behind statutes of limitations. It's not that hard to do the right thing, pricks.
If the church doesn't want to have so many sexual predators in their ranks, the solution's simple: castration.
Hey, it worked for China - eunuchs were less likely to get frisky with the concubines.
When did it become this? Its always been this. Ask the Gnostics or the Cathars what they think about this "religion of love".
Ugh. This is totally repulsive. Is it weird everytime I read Jesus preaching against the Pharisees, all I can think of is the self-righteous clergy in the RCC??
Thank God Brazil has some common sense.
#199 & #200 - with reference to your comments on the "reforms" attempted by John Paul II and his efforts to bring "the church out of the middle ages." What? John Paul II was a diehard conservative from a very traditionally conservative East European church in Poland, and he quietly worked to turn back many of the genuine reforms initiated in the 1960s during the 2nd Vatican council. He just had a great deal of personal charm (for a priest) and really good PR, and this gave people the mistaken impression that he was somehow "liberal." He was not. It was in fact JP2 who railed against the evils of contraception and, esp., condoms as a good safeguard against STDs, and don't forget he was still alive when all those pedophile priest scandals broke out and the Vatican did everything it could to shield them. Were he still alive, he would not have handled this situation in any way substantially different than Benedict XVI (chosen by a college of cardinals that now has a large number of men appointed by JP2) is now...
Ryogam @221:
You're saying any woman should be allowed to have an abortion at any time because of the pain involved in the birth process ... ?
Nerd of Redhead @ 207:
You've no problem with late-term abortions then?
amphiox @ 215:
Yes - that's what I said.
Indeed.
As a general principle that may be true, but many people would say many other people do not in fact make any constructive contribution to the community. When you say "each individual contributes to that communal effort" are you including serial killers, drug addicts living off the state, corrupt politicians? What about the Catholic priesthood - many people here seem to think they are harmful parasites.
By "HARMS" are you referring to extreme instances like the Brazilian case, or pregnancy & birth in general, which, thanks to Ryogam, we now know is the equivalent of "taking a grapefruit in the vagina"?
Piltdown @227, quote-mining so as to misrepresent someone is dishonest. The full quote is: So, here's the thought experiment: A madman kidnaps a child and threatens to kill it in nine months. In order to stop the madman from killing the child, the man says, "In nine months, I will, at random, take a woman off the street, and, if she has had sex at any time in the last nine months, I will force a grapefruit into her vagina, a sort of forced birth in reverse. If she refuses, I will kill the child. Remember, I'm only going to grab a woman who choose to have sex in the last nine months, she was warned what would happen if she had sex, and the life of a child is at stake. So, let me force a grapefruit into the vagina of the women or I'll kill the child."
Now, the questions is [...]
Tsk.
I don't for a minute believe you're so stupid you failed to get it - it's a clear case of dishonorable sophistry.
Katkinkate @ 183
I also had this answer in mind when I asked whether the Catholic church actually does anything of use:
Good people will do good things, regardless...
This is a truly disgusting story, but what do we really expect from mindless idiots?
Despite the revulsion I feel at this, one thing did occur to me about the nature of the Catholic Church, faith and excommunication.
If the Doctors were excommunicated, it follows that they (ostensibly) were Catholic.
Now supposing that they actually held these beliefs, and appeased their conscience by performing a STATE sanctioned abortion as it would undoubtedly save the life of the little girl.
Having been raised a Catholic, I remember them banging on about how it was your faith in the LORD JESUS CHRIST AS OUR SAVIOUR and all that, that was a pre-requisite to getting into heaven, and not necessarily what you did or didn't do.
Now if the Dr's believed this and still believe this, how can the Church (mans'earthly institute reflecting the word of god and all that crap) then say that the Dr's will not be getting their eternal reward in heaven due their being excommunicated - even if they have repented about the abortion?
Is their faith no longer valid? Does it not matter any more if the Dr's still believe in their dogma? Seems to me that the Church is now saying that even with the necessary faith they can pick and choose who gets into the club or is there some other explination...I ask that sincerely in the hope of a logical answer!!
no emphasis intended with the caps, just in caps as it was all they ever kept banging on about!!
So the CC is harping on about the rights of the unborn fetuses to live, but seems to have completely ignored the right of the 9yo to not only live, but to have a childhood, grow up without abuse, and be happy.
If you ask me, all those who have been excommunicated are better off as a result.
Pilty, no I don't have trouble with late term abortions. Mainly because I look at the reasons for late term abortions. Essentially none are performed for "convenience" like the anti-choice people keep parroting. They are performed either due to fetal abnormality, or the woman's health won't allow her to carry the fetus to term. Pilty, when you quit lying to yourself, you can quit lying to us.
Well you certainly don't do your homework. In 2007 Catholic Charities provided services to 7,736,855 people nationwide. In all, 171 main Catholic Charities agencies, which included 1,668 branches and affiliates, provided food, clothing, counseling, disaster relief, financial assistance and an array of vital community-based services 13,919,070 times last year. According to Dr. Karen Ristau, president of the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), Catholic schools provide $19.8 billion in savings each year for the nation. The figure is based on the average public school per pupil cost of $8,701 and the total Catholic school enrollment of more than 2.2 million students.
@Julie
You do realize that opinons on RCC theology are sharply divided depending on the priestly order you belong to.
The Jesuits I studied under, for example, would have probably sided with the abortion given the fact that carrying the twins to term would have killed the child; It was a lesser evil that is nontheless the only other choice left for the doctors.
Jesuits, and orders like the Dominicans or Benedictine monks follow an entirely different chain of command that doesn't necessarily lead up to the Vatican at least in the lowers ranks. And more often than not these charitable and educational institutions you speak of are under these order's care, NOT the Vatican's.
The problem with the Vatican is that it literally sits on an ivory tower, passing judgment on scenarios it scarcely understand. The Jesuits and other orders, on the other hand, are directly involved with their community's welfare, running the local aid programs and schools, two of which I am very proud to have graduated from.
In short, I doubt the Vatican's dogma had very little to do with these accomplishments the RCC touts...perhaps aside from hiding their sex offenders.
You've no problem with late-term abortions then?
I have a problem with late term abortions: they're cumbersome, expensive, and more dangerous than first trimester abortions (though still much safer than completing a pregnancy.) I'm firmly opposed to women being forced by financial circumstances or legal barriers to get a second trimester abortion when she knew she wanted to terminate the pregnancy much earlier. Contraception is even better but of course any contraceptive method--including abstinence*--can fail.
Three ways abstinence can fail:
1. The parties involved don't practice it properly (i.e. decide that "once couldn't hurt" at the last minute.)
2. Rape.
3. The parties involved practice non-penile-vaginal intercourse but some sperm manages to leak into the vagina--it's been known to happen.
I was waiting for this. The key word is Charities, not Catholic. These are the acts of Catholics, not of The Catholic church. Good people doing good things. Unless, of course, you're suggesting that the only reason those people were doing charitable work was because they were trying to curry favour with god. In which case, they would hardly be noble acts of selflessness, would they?
To the Church the fetus is a potential sex partner...can't let the pre-teen rape victims abort them.
Wheee, it's fun to be deranged.
Does anyone actually believe they have some right or entitlement to use their mother's reproductive organs over her objections or to the point of killing her?
Or do they just like to harass a raped 9-year-old and her family for shits and giggles?
Just more evidence that anti-abortion sentiment is the result of misogyny and the desire to control women, and has nothing at all to do with "life."
I’d be pleased to be corrected if I am wrong, but I think that in biology a parasite is restricted to an organism of a different species than its host, precisely to avoid the “problem” that viviparous offspring would automatically be considered parasitical in utero. I certainly think, despite this, that the fetus functions physiologically as a parasite, and this may explain first trimester morning sickness until the genetrix gets used to its presence. Again, if wrong ... but now I turn to the general topic.
ASVN’s (#100) claim is wrong that the fetus as potential human being makes it an actual human being and therefore that abortion is morally impermissible. The deontic status of the fetus must be such that its abortion is only one of obligatory, forbidden, or permissible.
If abortion were obligatory, the absurd, even Kafkaesque, consequence would be that each of us, right now, is the result and embodiment of a grave moral error that no-one could or would ever correct. It would be as if all money were declared counterfeit and expect everyone to stop using it. An absurd consequence implies an absurd premise.
The anti-choice people are fond of claiming that the fetus is an innocent human being. It is not one of these things. First, it is innocent, in exactly the same way that I am innocent of breaking the speed limit on the freeway – on my bicycle! Since I can’t possibly do that, it makes no sense to say I am innocent, since innocence is defined as freedom from guilt, not merely the absence of guilt. Since the fetus is not capable of any action (and kicking in later development is a reflexive behaviour, not an action, since action implies intent) and so cannot be guilty of any action, it cannot possibly be considered innocent.
Neither is it human. Many people get confused by the gross and fine morphological features of the fetus, two arms, two feet, pumping heart, fingerprints etc. etc., thinking that since it’s obviously neither a cyclid nor a camel and obviously looks like a human being, it must be a human being. Here, Alverant (#179) is correct, for these undoubtedly necessary biological characteristics are not, even considered together, sufficient for something to be counted as human. If they did suffice, then any one of us could be kept in a cage, watered, fed, and warmed, and our humanity would not be in the slightest affected. Since we know that this is not true (see the examples of feral children or children kept locked in closets by abusive adults), we know that the biological potential of the fetus to develop into a human being does not suffice to make it actually a human being. Actually being human, being a person that is, is a social characteristic premised upon that being’s capacity for agency, action with intent, and that characteristic is only latently potential within the fetus. Similarly, in ordinary parlance we do not speak of the pregnant woman in her biological capacity as a genetrix, and not even as a mother, but correctly as a “mother-to-be”. For, being a mother is not a biological condition but a social role that will depend on the successful parturition and early neonatal development of the fetus for its actualization.
Neither is the fetus a being, since it is not an individuated organism, much less a human being, for it is not being anything, let alone being human. It is by definition “merely” gestating, developing the potential to become a being.
To be sure, this developing potential is presumably an increasingly actual potential, while the potential of the blastocyst to become a human being is only a potential potential, so to speak. (I have to say “presumably” because we can’t be sure until after birth, because it may be born with cyclopsism or acephaly.) People such as ASVN get confused here by making a category mistake, confusing actual potential with the actuality of that potential. One might as well put up ones umbrella on a cloudy day, even though it’s not presently raining, to protect oneself from potential rain that is not yet actual. Of course, doing so will give others good warrant to doubt your sanity. (A related confusion is in thinking that being something, a teacher, say, depends on being (doing) that at all times, as if PZ ceases to be a teacher when he’s sleeping; even then he may be dreaming about a problem relating to his teaching duties; but be that as it may, when he is actively engaged in teaching duties, he is actualizing himself as a teacher.)
Since a fetus is only a potential, not an actual, human being, its abortion cannot be the murder of an actual human being. Since it cannot be murder, it cannot be forbidden. Since the deontic status of the fetus is such that its abortion can be neither obligatory nor forbidden, abortion is permissible.
In Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould had an insightful observation. Among mammals there are many, many instances of proportionality across species. For example, while an elephant breathes much more slowly than a mouse, given the greatly longer life of the elephant each species breathes just as many times over its life span. Similarly, the gestation period is a fixed proportion of average total life span across all mammalian species. The exception is human beings, in which the gestation period is only three/fifths of what would otherwise be expected, 9 instead of 15 months, and finished birth weight and birth size correspondingly reduced. Given the existing rigours of delivery, natural selection favoured women who gave birth well before the fetus could sap her physical resources for an additional half a year, and reach 15 +/- pounds, an average length of 27 inches, and a cranial circumference of such terrifying dimension I’ve forgotten the figure. In short, fetal development continues for a further 6 months following parturition.
This means that the early neonate can be assessed for its probable capability to thrive to its own reproductive age in direct ways that cannot be done before birth. For example, an acephalic neonate is immediately assessed as such at once, no heroic measures are taken, and it is left to expire within the few minutes or hours it usually takes. A coding or developmental error that somehow did not spontaneously abort a fetus with cyclopsism would be an automatic candidate to be mercifully euthanized, for imagine its suffering were to thrive to school age. Note that the dismay of a genetrix at a neonate with one green and one blue eye would not be such a candidate on that ground alone, as, by that point, the resources of the state have been invested in it; the state has therefore a stake in its ability to thrive that overrides the vanity of the woman. But if by 6 months after parturition the neonate has been unable to focus its eyes, to roll over, and to respond to social cues, its failure to develop normally would give great warrant to consider its ability to thrive into the future and its euthanasia now, without moral qualm.
Lest I be considered a heartless moral monster for these considerations I offer these facts. I was precipitated into existence in Canada in 1950, out of wedlock. Had this happened in a more enlightened age a few decades later, my genetrix could reasonably have terminated her unwelcome pregnancy, and it would not have mattered to me in the slightest, since I did not exist.
Many years ago I spotted Dr. Morgentaler’s Toronto abortion clinic. (Dr. M. was named in 2008 to the Governor General’s Order of Canada for his work on behalf of women.) Next door was the religious opposition in a place called “The Way Inn”. I locked my bicycle, sauntered in, and perused their literature for a while, then remarked to the woman in charge, “you know, it strikes me that this issue has little to do with preserving unborn babies”. “Of course not” she replied. “Uh, what is it about then?” “Sex!” she hissed. “Whoa, that’s a big word. What do you mean?” “I mean, people having sex without consequences, people having sex outside of marriage!” Struggling to keep from laughing in her face, I picked my jaw off the floor and left that house of evil.
There you have it, the true motivation of the anti-choice fanatics.
Marilove @ #128:
Don't forget two huge wedges of placenta, and two grapevines of umbilical cord, etc. etc. It ain't for the faint of heart. Literally.
Doug the Primate @ 240
Are you saying that feral children are not fully human even though they look human?
Are you saying that the greater one's capacity for agency, the more human one is? If so, by what criteria do we assess individuals' capacity for agency and at what point do we decide to withdraw social support to those of a limit capacity? What is decisive, the intent or the ability to act on it (cf Stephen Hawking)?
You're saying any woman should be allowed to have an abortion at any time because of the pain involved in the birth process ... ?
It's like he imagines some woman is going to get 8 months into a pregnancy and then wake up one day and be all "Wait! I totally just realized how bad this thing is going to hurt on the way out! Crap!" and immediately run off to get an abortion. Because women can only contemplate consequences that are less than 6 months in the future. 9.9
And yes, I *do* think a woman should be allowed to have an abortion any time she feels like it. I don't care what her reasons are.
EXTRA! EXTRA! BRAZILIAN BISHOPS CONFEDERATION DENIES THAT THE EXCOMMUNICATIONS WERE FOR REAL.
They are now saying it was just an outcry from the Recife's bishop in face of the abortion. I did tell you they were gutless cowards.
read all about it... er in Portuguese... here:
http://oglobo.globo.com/pais/mat/2009/03/12/cnbb-diz-que-ninguem-foi-ex…
and here:
http://jbonline.terra.com.br/leiajb/noticias/2009/03/13/pais/igreja_vol…
EXTRA! EXTRA! BRAZILIAN BISHOPS CONFEDERATION DENIES THAT THE EXCOMMUNICATIONS WERE FOR REAL.
Meanwhile, Archbishop John Naumann has instructed his priests to not give communion to Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas and our next Secretary of HHS.
It's like they don't even believe their own BS any more.
Bagelsan @ 243: "You're saying any woman should be allowed to have an abortion at any time ... "
Well, actually I didn't say that, but I will now: Inasmuch as abortion is morally permissible, it remains a woman's sovereign right to have an abortion, at any time, for any reason; and neither church, nor state, nor any man is in a moral position to deny her.
Piltdown Man @ 242: "Are you saying that feral children are not fully human even though they look human?" I would apply the Turing Test: can they learn to function as human beings? If yes, then yes; if no, then no, they are not human, merely Homo sapiens.
"Are you saying that the greater one's capacity for agency, the more human one is?" No. Being human is a qualitative, not quantitave matter. Just as one can be a better or worse human being, one remains a human being, even if judged not guilty by reason of impaired mental capacity (as in the recent Canadian case of the man who stabbed and decapitated a youth on a Greyhound).
"What is decisive [in determining humanity?], the intent or the ability to act on it (cf Stephen Hawking)?" False dichotomy: evidently, Prof Hawking has both. Actually, there can be no action (only reflexive behaviour) without intent; and without intention, there can be no action.
" ... at what point do we decide to withdraw social support to those of a limit capacity?" Never. Compassion rules, first, last, and always. Where a neonate is evidently of such diminished capacity to ever function as a human being, the compassionate act is euthanize it before it can suffer further (because, just by looking like a human being, it will be expected to act like one; but, incapable, it will be subject to ridicule and abuse). The apparent exception, I suppose, is in the case of criminal incarceration. In Canada we do not have capital punishment, for the good and sufficient reason that the risk of wrongful execution is too great, even if by 1 : 1M. We do have a handful of really vicious serial killers who are segrgated from the main prison population for their own protection. But that measure of compassion is excessive, I believe, in that the biological existence of these moral animals could be ensured at much less cost and greater security by a means that would take us way O/T here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/20/AR20090…
Apparently, the decision has been reversed:
@Hayate Yagami
Thanks for the update. Not that it makes the RCC any less hypocritical, imho, but at least it seems they still have small pockets of intelligence.