BRAZIL's influential Catholic Church today raged against an abortion carried out on a nine-year-old girl who had been pregnant with twins after allegedly being raped by her stepfather. An archbishop for the northern region where the termination was conducted, Father Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, said the church was excommunicating all those responsible for the abortion: the medical team and the girl's mother.
The operation - carried out because of doctors' fears the slender girl might die if she carried the fetuses to term - was a crime in the eyes of the chuch, he said.
"God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value,'' Archbishop Cardoso told the news television network Globo.
"The adults who approved, who carried out this abortion, will be excommunicated,'' said the archbishop for the Recife region.
The case has sparked off fierce debate in Brazil, where abortion is illegal except in cases of rape or if the woman's health is in danger.
The girl, who was not identified because she is a minor, was last week found to be four months' pregnant after being taken to hospital suffering stomach pains.
Officials said she told them she had suffered sexual abuse by her stepfather since the age of six.
Police said the 23-year-old stepfather also allegedly sexually abused the girl's physically handicapped 14-year-old sister.
He was arrested a week ago and is being kept in protective custody. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.
The website of Globo reported that another girl, aged 11, was being looked after in a hospital in southern Brazil after being found to be seven months' pregnant following alleged sexual abuse at the hands of her adoptive father.
That suspect, 51, turned himself into police in February.
He told officers he had had sexual relations once with his adopted daughter, at her initiative, according to the police chief for the town of Irai, Antonio Maieron.
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(Source: TA)