A CATHOLIC archbishop has sparked controversy in Brazil by saying the mother of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion on Wednesday following a rape is automatically excommunicated for allowing the procedure to go ahead.
Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife also declared that according to canon law the doctor who performed the abortion is considered excommunicated, along with anyone else involved.
The child was raped by her stepfather, who has since admitted abusing her over the last three years. Abortion is generally illegal in Brazil but allowed in cases of rape or when the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life.
The child entered hospital in the northeastern city of Recife on Tuesday night, where she was given medication to interrupt the pregnancy, which doctors said was terminated by early Wednesday morning. She was pregnant with twins.
The archbishop’s statements have drawn condemnation from Brazilian politicians and caused disquiet among some theologians concerned by the difficulties raised by the case.
But Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho has denied media reports that he personally ordered the excommunications. “I simply recalled what is in church canon law. Excommunication is automatic for those who participate in an abortion. I did not excommunicate anyone, just remembered the church’s law which says they are automatically excommunicated,” he said.
Before the abortion was carried out the archdiocese’s lawyers threatened to charge the mother with homicide, citing the Brazilian constitution’s guarantee to the right to life.
The doctor who carried out the procedure has defended his actions. “If the pregnancy had continued, the damage would have been worse, being a high risk pregnancy. The risk would have been of death or at the very least that she would never have been able to become pregnant again,” Dr Olímpio Moraes told O Globo newspaper.
“There are two legal justifications for abortion envisioned by the law, which are rape and risk to life. She [the girl] falls within the two and, as a doctor, I could not let a girl of nine years be submitted to this suffering and even pay with her own life.”
But Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho has dismissed the fact that the abortion was legal under Brazilian law as irrelevant to the question of excommunication. “God’s law is above whatever human law. So when a human law is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value,” he said.
The archbishop made clear that the excommunication did not extend to the young girl at the centre of the case. Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho is a leading member of the Brazilian Catholic Church’s conservative wing and a firm opponent of abortion which he calls a “silent holocaust”.