"Nine-Year-Old's Abortion Outrages Brazil's Catholic Church"

This is a tough one:

The case of the pregnant 9-year-old was shocking enough. But it was the response of the Catholic Church that infuriated many Brazilians. Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. (TIME)

Cardinal Re responds to the backlash:

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation for Bishops, told La Stampa, an Italian daily newspaper, that the case was sad, but that “the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated.” (NYT)

Not surprisingly, both TIME and the NYT fail to report an important detail: did Archbishop Sobrinho formally excommunicate the parties who procured the abortion? You see, under Canon Law, anyone who procures the abortion is automatically excommunicated - no special intervention of the bishop is necessary.

So yes, this is a tough case - and it puts the Church in the worst possible light. But the fact of the matter remains that there were two innocents destroyed here. And added to the first grave wrong of the rape, is the second grave wrong of this double murder.

Expect the individuals who disagree with the Church's stance of defending innocent life to take as much advantage of this situation as possible, especially in Brazil. It's the closest they can ever get to a "winning argument." And they are masters of using the leverage provided by "hard cases."

Of course, nothing should be hard about defending the innocent.

update: LifeSiteNews gets all the important points on this story right.