Madam, – In recent days a terrible story has emerged from Brazil, where a Catholic archbishop has excommunicated the mother of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion. She was the victim of rape by her stepfather, who has been arrested.
Abortion is legal in Brazil in the specific cases of rape and direct threat to life. The doctors who concluded that the girl’s life was threatened by her pregnancy with twins were also excommunicated.
Brazil’s President Lula, a Catholic, expressed regret at the church’s deeply conservative attitude, and was quoted as saying that “the doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl nine years old. . . the medical profession was more right than the church.”
The archbishop asserted that the law of God was above any human law but demonstrated his charity in deciding that the girl herself should not be excommunicated because of her age.
There is much comment in this country about the concerns of Catholics about so-called social and ethical issues in the context of the Lisbon Treaty and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. We are asked by a mixture of campaigners and by what are described as Catholic newspapers to see terms such as “equality”, “discrimination” and – believe it or not – “human dignity” as somehow concealing threats to Christian values from our malign European neighbours.
His Grace the Archbishop of Recife was, I suppose, upholding the true meaning of human dignity in turning the full weight of his authority on a raped child and her mother. – Yours, etc,