An Abortion in Brazil

This story is so incendiary that the only possible way to report it is in a straightforward "just the facts" manner, with as little comment as possible. The facts scream loud enough.

According to reports, like this one, a nine year old girl, who was raped repeatedly by her stepfather from the time she was six years old, was given an emergency abortion by doctors after being rushed to the hospital with stomach pains. The Roman Catholic Church, which is very influential in this conservative nation, excommunicated the girl's mother and the doctors who performed the emergency, life saving surgery.

Meanwhile, the stepfather, who was caught while trying to flee the country, is still a member in good standing of the Church.

The decision of the ultra conservative Archbishop of coastal Recife, Jose Cardoso Sorinho, has been met with a firestorm across Brazil, but the Vatican defended the decision.

Cardinal Giovanni Batista Re, who heads the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, told reporters that although the girl fell pregnant after apparently being abused by her stepfather, her twins had, "the right to live, and could not be eliminated".

In an interview with the Italian newspaper, La Stampa, the cardinal added: "It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons. Life must always be protected."

The controversy represents a PR nightmare for the Vatican. The unnamed girl's mother and doctors were excommunicated for agreeing to Wednesday's emergency abortion yet the Church has not taken formal steps against the stepfather, who is in custody. Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the conservative regional archbishop for Pernambuco where the girl was rushed to hospital, has said that the man would not be thrown out of the Church, because although he had allegedly committed "a heinous crime", the Church took the view that "the abortion, the elimination of an innocent life, was more serious".

Really? More serious than the fact that this man is apparently a serial rapist who also abused the girl's 14 year old handicapped sister?

The pregnant nine year old weighed 80 pounds and was carrying twins. Doctors believed her hips were too childishly thin for her to deliver the baby. The archbishop's solution - she could have had a Caesarian section.

The incident has sparked outrage across Brazil and even its president has weighed in.

Even the President, Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, has waded into the row. "As a Christian and a Catholic, I deeply regret that a bishop of the Catholic Church has such a conservative attitude," he said "The doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl of nine years old. In this case, the medical profession was more right than the Church."

And even one of the doctors, himself a devout Catholic, spoke out publicly

One of the doctors involved in the abortion, Rivaldo Albuquerque, has raised the prospect of public clashes at his local church, telling Globo, the nation's main TV network, that he would keep going to mass there, regardless of the archbishop's order.

Bush Administration Enacts Rule That Could Endanger Women's Access to Birth Control

Well the Bush administration is doing it - condemning millions of women to unwanted pregnancies, allowing health care workers to deny a variety of services to them, just as was promised back on July 31. The Washington Post is now reporting

The Bush administration today announced plans to implement a controversial regulation designed to protect doctors, nurses and other health-care workers who object to abortion from being forced to deliver services that violate their personal beliefs.

The rule empowers federal health officials to pull funding from more than 584,000 hospitals, clinics, health plans, doctors' offices and other entities if they do not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care they find objectionable on personal, moral or religious grounds.

....

The proposed regulation, which could go into effect after a 30-day comment period, was welcomed by conservative groups, abortion opponents and others as necessary to safeguard workers from being fired, disciplined or penalized in other ways. Women's health advocates, family planning advocates, abortion rights activists and others, however, condemned the regulation, saying it could create sweeping obstacles to a variety of health services, including abortion, family planning, end-of-life care and possibly a wide range of scientific research.

"It's breathtaking," said Robyn S. Shapiro, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "The impact could be enormous."

The regulation drops the most controversial language in a draft version that would have explicitly defined an abortion for the first time in a federal law or regulation as anything that interfered with a fertilized egg after conception. But both supporters and critics said the regulation remained broad enough to protect pharmacists, doctors, nurses and others from providing birth control pills, Plan B emergency contraception and other forms of contraception, and explicitly allows workers to withhold information about such services and refuse to refer patients elsewhere.

Here's the thing that makes this so despicable. It doesn't just protect a health care worker from personally having to deliver services he opposes on so-called moral grounds, it says that he can refuse to even discuss it or offer an alternative doctor or pharmacist who will perform those services. So, in a small town with only a couple of drugstores, a clerk behind the counter can refuse to sell a woman - or even a man - a contraceptive and refuse to tell that person where else he or she can go to buy it.

We're not talking about a late term abortion here. We're talking about anybody being able to deprive a woman of birth control pills or Plan B after being raped. What about her right to prevent a pregnancy? We're talking about de facto outlawing of, not abortion, but BIRTH CONTROL! And that would include birth control for married people.

The truth is 51 to 53 percent of Americans favor a woman's right to have an abortion, especially if her health or life is threatened or if she's raped. Larger percentages favor a woman's right to prevent a pregnancy with the most effective contraceptives available, birth control pills. But every doctor in every small town across America, every pharmacist, can now become his own legislator, taking away from a couple a fundamental right that is guaranteed them by law.

The truth is the conservative Republicans have been unable to outlaw abortion and birth control for years. Every attempt they've made has backfired because the public just doesn't support it. This is their last shot at imposing their fanatical theocratic will on those who don't agree with them theologically. This is nothing more than an attempt to impose their very sectarian religious views on others. Don't be fooled by it.

Keith Fimian's Silence

VA Blogger, writing for Too Conservative, last week tried to deflect the growing concern of voters in the 11th CD over conservative GOP candidate Keith Fimian’s refusal to completely reveal his views on abortion and birth control. Here’s a stunning piece of misdirection to make it seem like Gerry Connolly’s campaign is focusing on socially divisive wedge issues rather than other substantive concerns in the district.

I wrote earlier this week a response to the Examiner’s story that “outs” Keith Fimian as a Catholic business owner and wondered if Gerry Connolly really wants to run a cultural campaign. It’s clear Keith Fimian does not, and would rather focus on the issues that matter to VA-11 voters: transportation, the economy, and national security.

And here’s the earlier blog post to which that refers.

Contrary to the implication of the headline of the story, Keith’s views aren’t at all “out of touch” in the district. The only ones out of touch are the ones like the DCCC that believe social issues like abortion and contraception are more important than issues like the economy, energy, and our national security, where Keith excels. If Connolly chooses to follow the DCCC’s lead, he wind up in the same sinking ship that Janet Oleszek found herself in running against Cuccinelli last fall.

In that piece, VA Blogger questioned whether Connolly would focus his entire campaign on Fimian’s extreme social and religious views and compared Connolly's campaign to Oleszek’s unsuccessful campaign against Ken Cuccinelli, where many of her mailers attempted to paint Cuccinelli as out of touch with his district because of his views on abortion.

I happen to agree with VA Blogger to some extent, as I wrote here. If the race becomes a debate about abortion, most voters will yawn. That’s because, while the district is decidedly pro choice, it’s just not a top concern. Voters don’t see that right as threatened. Never mind that the balance of the Supreme Court is just one appointment away from tipping so far to the right that overturning Roe v Wade is in striking distance for anti-abortion groups. Safe and legal abortions are such an ingrained part of the American way of life and dire warnings about its imminent demise have been issued for so long, that most people just don’t believe it’s possible they’ll actually lose that right.

I’m not so sure.

At the same time, although I’m personally pro-choice, I have a history of not wishing to demonize those who are pro-life. I don’t agree with them, but I think most of them are sincerely concerned with protecting what they see as live human beings.

But the definition of what constitutes an abortion and when life begins is getting slipperier and slipperier all the time. That definition was always more a philosophical and religious one rather than one grounded in true science. But for some on the right, it’s no longer that life begins at the moment of conception. Many now believe life begins at the moment of sexual activity and any attempt to prevent conception is also abortion. That's a position that makes almost all methods of contraception the equivalent to abortion.

That is a position that is neither scientific nor even logical. Yet, the Bush administration has proposed a regulation that would protect medical workers who refuse to provide women with birth control information, as reported here. (Bolding is mine)

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing a draft regulation that would deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan or other entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions, including providing birth-control pills, IUDs and the Plan B emergency contraceptive.

Although the administration wishes to portray it as simply an attempt to protect the right of employees to follow the dictates of their conscience, the truth is it is an egregious infringement on the rights of patients to receive adequate health care.

Let’s play a little mind game here. What if you lived in a small town and went to the only hospital accessible to you for treatment for cancer. And what if some healthcare practitioners only believed in holistic care and were morally opposed to chemotherapy because they honestly believed it harmed patients. Yet you, based on all your reading of scientific literature, knew that it was the most effective way to treat your cancer and save your life. Whose decision should this be? The patient or the healthcare workers? I think we all know the answer to that question. In fact, it’s only when it comes to women’s reproductive health is it ever even an issue.

But the main point is that, in the case of this proposed regulation, the definition of what is an abortion is not based on science but on a purely religious definition of when life begins. Here’s what some experts had to say.

"They are manipulating the system by manipulating the definition of the word 'abortion,' " said Susan F. Wood, a professor at George Washington University who resigned from the Food and Drug Administration over the delays in approving the nonprescription sale of Plan B. "It's another example of this administration's disregard for science and medicine in how agencies make decisions."

The proposal is outlined in a 39-page draft regulation that has been circulated among several HHS agencies. The FDA has not objected, but several officials at the National Institutes of Health said that the agency had expressed serious concerns.

"This is causing a lot of distress," said one NIH researcher who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. "It's a redefinition of abortion that does not match any of the current medical definitions. It's ideologically based and not based on science and could interfere with the development of many new therapies to treat diseases."

And there’s the rub. Religious people, however, well meaning, are redefining science in ways that have no scientific, medical, or evidential basis. They are attempting to ram their particular and sectarian religious and moral views down the throats of those of other religions who don’t agree with them and also have rights, including the right to adequate treatment that meets their needs.

Because of concerns over the loss of the right to receive adequate reproductive health care, some Democratic women in Fairfax wrote to Keith Fimian with the not unreasonable question, would he support the administration’s contention that health care workers have the right to deny a legal service to their patients because of their personal morality?

Fimian has refused to answer clearly, honestly, and thoroughly. Yet this is an issue he might have to vote on. And whether it’s the most important issue or merely one of several minor issues, voters whom he hopes to represent have the right to know his answer. That’s not playing the social wedge issue card. That’s demanding to know where the candidate stands.

As a matter of fact, I’m in that district. I would be a constituent of Keith Fimian’s should he win. I think I have a right to know where he stands on an issue that could affect my health. And that’s not coming from Gerry’s campaign. It’s coming from me, a voter and citizen. And a constituent.