RIO DE JANEIRO — A 9-year-old girl who was carrying twins, allegedly after being raped by her stepfather, underwent an abortion Wednesday despite complaints from Brazil’s Roman Catholic church.
Police said the stepfather has been jailed since last week.
Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but judges can make exceptions if the mother’s life is in danger or the fetus has no chance of survival.
Call me crazy, but how anyone can tell a 9 year old rape and incest victim, whose preganacy puts her very life at “serious risk” according to doctors, that she cannot even make the choice to defend her own life, is way the fuck beyond me. And while this particular 9 year old girl lives is Brasil, let’s not forget that this is precisely what countless American fundagelicals would like to make the law of our land.
[via Internet Infidels News Wire]
4 Comments
In this particular case,
*step* father means not incest.
*9* means not qualified to make any life and death choices.
At minimum there should be multiple medical opinions gathered about her chances of carrying to term *if* profesisonals agree that pregnancy threatens her and the babies then abortion is the ethical choice. But let's not mince words, this is a case of justified homicide.
In the bigger picture there are almost no Americans who want a 100% no abortion rule. But many are tired of this extremely rare exception being used to justify abortions for all on demand for any reason. Less than 1% of abortions performed are for cases of rape or incest. 85% of those women do not want abortions. Yet people still use this tiny fraction of all cases to justify the destruction of 1.3 million human lives per year in the US alone.
1% of 15% of 1.3 million is about 2000. Many of those 2000 women, if given the chance to talk with others who have aborted in the same situation would choose differently. For this tiny splinter of a fraction of a fraction of cases virtually everyone would agree on offering abortion to the mother. It is a ridiculous strawman to suggest otherwise.
Stop tilting at windmills and making stuff up, it just makes you look ignorant.
Greg, I find it incredible that while you are unable to quantify the number of people who "want a 100% no abortion rule [sic]", as you put it, to any greater precision than "almost no Americans", you have the gall to say that I'm "making stuff up" by my use of the word "countless". How dare you sir.
And you call me ignorant! That's brass, Greg. Brass.
The rest of your comment is mere dictum and as such, no response is required.
Thanks for sharing your opinion, Greg. Not that the definition of incest matters in any respect–a 9 year old impregnated by her stepfather is pretty horrible, whether it's incestuous or not–but regardless, despite the common misconception that incest means sexual relations between blood relatives (if we all come from one "Adam" and one "Eve", then we're all blood relatives, no?), in fact, incest is nearly always defined as sexual relations between people too closely related (by consanguinity or affinity) to marry. So, for instance, sexual relations between third cousins once removed would be considered incest almost nowhere, while sexual relations between step-siblings–like half-siblings–would be considered incest in nearly every U.S. state.
We certainly can agree on the "justified" portion, and finding common ground has to be viewed as a good thing. I mean, this is certainly a subject about which reasonable minds can differ, and I for one respect the fact that others have wrestled with this issue and reached a different conclusion that have I.