This is going to be ugly...

First off, read this article. If you don't, don't bother to read this rest of this entry.

So it seems some whacko Archbishop in Brazil has started waving his little magic shepherd's staff and excommunicating people who gave this 9 year old girl a medically necessary abortion. Here's the background: Pervo stepdad rapes 9 year old stepdaughter. 9 year old stepdaughter gets sick sometime later. 9 year old goes to the hospital. 9 year old girl is found to pregnant, with twins. Doctors decide that the small uterus of this 9 year old, 80 pound girl cannot hold up to carrying one child, let alone two. Doctors proceed to terminate the pregnancy. Archbishop gets his holier than thou panties in a bunch and starts excommunicating the people who saved this girl's life, including her mother. However, they don't bother to excommunicate the rapist. Weird huh? Then finally, religious whack jobs the world over start talking about how the church is right, abortion is murder, yadda yadda yadda.

So what indeed is wrong with this picture? First let me clarify my position on abortion. I am strongly pro-choice. I am not "pro abortion." I would never have one, however, I don't have a uterus either, so it's not really my deal. The choice of what goes on inside a woman's body is hers. I'm not a doctor. Outside of a few college biology and chemistry classes, I have no qualification to expound on at what point does life begin. Here's my thought though. A egg and a sperm are both human and alive in some respect, and the potential for a human life to begin certainly exists after conception. However, as many a woman who has miscarried (including my own mother) will tell you, it doesn't always happen that way.

It seems to be painfully obvious in this circumstance that qualified medical professionals came to the realization that in order to save this little girl's life, the pregnancy needed to be terminated. This girl did not choose to be raped. Period. Why should she have to die because of someone else's religious belief prohibited the perfectly safe medical procedure needed to save it. Does your God, Catholic church, honestly think that this little girl, with her whole life in front of her, should die to prevent an abortion from taking place? If that's the case, take your God and shove him where the sun don't shine.

Let's talk about God here for a minute. If every life is sacred to God, and no pregnancy should ever be ended before being brought to term, why does God allow miscarriages to happen? Is God not powerful enough to create a perfect fetus that will be viablee until birth for every conception? If he can do that, does he just think that some fetuses don't deserve to grow and become human, or is he just being a sadistic bastard and messing with the spirit of the miscarried child and the crushed parents? Take your pick. Feel free to impale yourselves on the horns of that dilemma.

Lets say the right wingers are indeed correct, and god so dispises abortion that this 9 year old girl and others like her should die rather than have an abortion. Well abortions are done in all corners of the globe everyday. What happens to the souls of those aborted children. Does God not give them another chance at life somewhere? Is God that much of a douchebag that he would tell this soul "Sorry, your mom had an abortion, you're just done now? Let me guess, then are angel mothers that live in heaven and nurse these aborted souls for all time and eternity. Doesn't sound like a God who values life to me.

The ultimate weirdness for me here is that it is the Catholic church who is standing against this. Ok, lets see, the church whose Pope, the Vicar of Christ, turned a blind eye for YEARS while pedophile priests were raping alter boys left and right? What is wrong with religion? How many of these lawsuits has the church settled, and how much of the money given by it's members has been thrown at the issue in hopes it would go away?

Let me now say this, I'm mainly comfortable in Catholicism. My wife and were married in the church, and I have even considered joining the church as I have been greatly touched by the beauty in this faith that has helped me overcome some difficulties in my life. However, it's hard to swallow this. I can't believe in a God who would act like this. I believe God would want this little 9 year old girl to survive and thrive despite the evil perpetrated on her. I believe God will give the souls of those children another shot somewhere down the line. I beleive that God has not appointed me to be a judge, and that if abortion is such a heinous sin, God will judge these folks in his time. I also believe God wants me to live the best life I can and help other people out, which is what these doctors were doing with this little girl.

However, I feel that if we continue to let religion dominate the way we deal with each other on a day to day basis, particularly the more negative aspects of religion, that we are indeed headed for a new Dark Age.

God help this little Girl that she can grow up and live the life she was meant to live, and God Bless the doctors who went against the grain and gave her her life back.