Abortion Ban In Nicaragua

Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos has signed into law a ban on all abortions, even in cases when a woman's life is judged to be at risk.

There will be no more exceptions like the case of nine year old girl, raped and four months pregnant, whose parents wanted to save her from carrying the pregnancy to term and managed to secure an abortion for her.

Her parents and doctors who carried out the procedure were excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church and prosecutors threatened to bring charges against those responsible.

Nicaraguan Roman Catholic bishops wrote an open letter to the government asking whether there was any real difference between abortion and terrorist suicide bombings.

Well, they won, and now all women and children who become pregnant via rape and/or are in danger from pregnancy will have to be aborted by illegal means, leave the country for an abortion if they have the money, or carry the pregnancy to term and/or die.

Comments

[Psalmist]

Doubtless this will be greeted with significant joy by many Christians. My heart breaks for the babies born to nine- and ten-year-old girls, as well as the girls themselves. Legislation like this seems to devalue life once it is born, for the sake of taking a superficial "pro-life" stand. The lives of the girls who will die in pregnancy and childbirth, the lives of the babies handicapped for life by malnutrition and the mothers' immature bodies, the lives of the stillborn babies, seem to matter not at all. No, abortion is rarely a solution. But when a child is raped, should her life be forfeit or severely jeopardized for the sake of politicians' self-promotion? How is that any different than those social systems that advocate pronouncing the death sentence on women who are raped?

I don't think it's always even the "unborn" who are being idolized by the factions of the "pro-life" movement that can straight-facedly make decisions like this one. It's pregnancy. The bigger, the later term, the better. As long as she doesn't abort the baby, who cares what happens to her or the baby?

And here in the U.S., we have ample evidence that there's little or no thought--and certainly less and less money--put toward improving the lives of mothers and their children. I was unable to sleep a couple of nights ago and happened on an overnight show by a televangelist--one of those ageing "barbie and ken" kind of husband-wife teams--bemoaning America's "greatest sin": the six-digit figure for out-of-wedlock births. Uh, would that many more abortions have been "less sinful"? We demonize women who abort their babies. We demonize unmarried women who get pregnant, and who give birth to their babies. We say we believe women should stay home with their young children, yet we demonize those poor (impoverished) women who draw public assistance in order to do so. We demonize programs such as WIC and Head Start as wasteful drains on citizens' hard-earned tax dollars. The fact is, we expect a magic-wand solution so that everyone marries young, has a fairly large number of children, carries them all to term, mom stays home to care for them, dad never loses his job and has plenty of money to provide for them, and society never has to spend a cent to worry ourselves over any family. We're such hypocrites! It's always somebody else's problem. We're so NOT our sisters' and childrens' keepers.

God is NOT being honored by the legislation in Nicaragua. As long as the victims of rape are the only ones who have a high price to pay for the crime, even secular justice is not being served. Oh, well. As long as there are no abortions, all's right with the world, I guess. (feeling sick)

[Phil Dziki]

Pat,

After viewing this for the first time, I am going to be a little bit disappointed if in fact after your plunge into the egalitarian (All We Were Meant To Be) views concerning marriage, that you have slid down the hill toward pro-abortion (choice?) beliefs, from a solidly biblical evangelical views that you had. As someone who knows your husband well, and who graduated from Moody (took many courses from him), and who graduated from Calvin with 2 majors, who also went thru and experienced the humanistic muck of the 70's, I cannot believe that you have not resisted all of that, or come to see how bogus much of it was. What next - biblical defense of gay rights, which is the general path the Sojourner types have taken (many intellectual elitists from Calvin have gone that route). I am not a Dobsonite, but goodness gracious, let let loose of those phoney humanistic days and screwball pseudo-intellectual/evangelicals of the 1970/80s.

[Pat Gundry]

Phil, It could be useful to take a longer look at this blog and also my blog www.makeabortionunnecessary.com before you draw the conclusions you've expressed in your comment.

I never plunged into anything egalitarian, I came at it slowly and carefully, via my own Bible study. My book Woman Be Free, about applying the art and science of hermeneutics to Bible passages about women had nothing to do with the book All We're Meant To Be. I respect the authors of that book, but it was written during the time I was writing mine and I did not see it until after mine was completed. My views about marriage are my own and not derived from Hardesty and Scanzoni's work at all.

The presupposition you've presumed is inaccurate. I have not slidden anywhere. My views on abortion are set out plainly on my blog/site www.makeabortionunnecessary.com.

I'm not aware of humanistic muck in the 70's. I am aware that "humanism" was a favorite label to put on many people as some sort of derogatory term then. But, I never thought it appropriate to do that. And, your knowing my husband, having taken classes from him, and graduating from Calvin really has no relevance to my blog, nor my views on abortion.

There's nothing humanistic (in the way you're implying) about my beliefs regarding abortion.

I believe that human rights should be extended to all people. But I leave the work toward gay rights to others. It's not an area I have any desire to study enough to have a well informed opinion about.

There is no connection between my beliefs and work and any "Sojourner types," "intellectual elitists from Calvin" nor "phoney humanistic days," or "screwball pseudo-intellectual/evangelicals." You're assuming too much. You don't know me well enough to know if there is such a connection, and haven't read enough of what I've written to know whether what you've concluded is valid or not.

I think it's insulting for you to dismiss my honest and compassionate work to help prevent the need for abortion before reading enough of what I've written to know what I actually think and say on the subject. If you do choose to read enough to have an informed opinion about it, maybe you'll also want to come back here and apologize.

[John Phillips]

Abortion is murder. If an individual kills a woman, and at the autopsy they find out that she was pregnant, it counts as two counts of murder by law. One for the woman and one for the unborn child. It's hypocritical to consider that situation murder and then allow abortions to be legal. Pro-life all the way. Get off your high throne. The amount of abortions due to rape vs the amount of abortions total is completely miniscule and insignificant. Look up the statistics if you don't agree. Think of the ban as whole rather than the minority. If you could save 40 out of 50 people from a burning building, wouldn't you? According to what I'm reading, you'd just let everybody die. In ratio, banning abortion saves more lives than it loses, so I consider that a good thing. Rape is horrible, but it's inevitable. So don't be so pessimistic and think about all the good banning abortion will do. Think about it, abortion hasn't been around for that long when compared to civilization's beginnings. We have come so far without it, we don't need it now.

[Mother by accident-mommy by choice.]

This post is entirely disgusting. For one thing, I feel sorry for the 9 year old who was raped. She should never have had to go through that. That being said, what the hell were her parents doing in order for her to be raped at 9 YEARS OLD?? Obviously, they weren't keeping a close enough watch on their daughter. So blame them for her pregnancy. For another, bring religous views into a subject like this is ignorant. Do you really think God approves of abortion? If cursing and drinking too much wine is a sin, i don't even want to know what abortion means to Him. Allowing abortion is allowing people to not take responsibility for their actions. Abortion does not distinguish between medical concerns or just the selfish acts of a girl who doesn't want a baby. Abortion is a young procedure. How did anyone in the past ever get by? Oh yeah, they endured it. If you are old enough to have sex, then you are old enough to take responsibility. At least be woman enough to carry the child to term and give someone else the chance to have a child. Abortion is like slapping every mother and father wanting a child but unable to conceive right in the face. Same with financial reasons. Healthcare isn't the problem with abortion. There is free healthcare all over, and hostpitals can not deny you treatment. If you can't afford to have a child, adopt the child out to someone who can. I got pregnant at 19, and I admit that abortion crossed my mind for a second...then I realized how selfish that would be. I took responsibility and now I have the best gift possible. There's no love like a mother's love for her child. And how will anyone get the chance if they can abort for any reason? How about the cons of abortion? Are you aware of what the procedures are? How can scraping the uterine wall, sucking out it's contents, or any other insane procedure (I'm not even going to go there with partial-birth abortion), not pose threat to the mother?

[Holly]

How can you blame the child's parents??? How can you even imagine you understand their situation enough to pass judgement? How about, oh let me see...how about we blame the men who rape 9 y/o girls?

[Rudzani]

were they to suffer the same state ... but that's what hapnpes when people rage against something they have never experienced firsthand.Some people rail against so many issues for the mere sake of their own morality says so - until it hapnpes to them. Now, logic would say that it would be then that they would understand. But, as we all know, people are idiots, and I'm sure that days after the abortion (or whatever else it was they did against their so-called hardline morality) they were right back out there railing against it again.It is indeed interesting just how malleable someone's moral standards can be when it's that person's neck on the line. And it need not be social issues - it hapnpes in business all the time.Remember media megalomaniac Rupert Murdoch's initial dismissal of the Internet as a mass communication medium, and his assessment that it would only further fragment the market, hence ruining papers, TV and radio? The second he saw how much money there was to be made in it, and how each of his competitors were jumping onto online media technologies, his he was all over it like a 12-year old on a Sears catalogue. Now his entire media empire is immersed in and bound together by the Net. You can say, yeah, it's just business, and electronic media has worked out, and I'd say you're half right. This is a guy who became an offline media folk hero when he fought the web tooth and nail in defense of newspapers, radio and television, only to turn around and, without admission of having made a mistake or anything, suddenly announces the Net's goodness as if nothing ever happened. He then watches the money roll in by merging it all into one package and speeding up the rate of info-flow, which we all know serves to slow the rate of info-intake by creating info-overload. Never mind how much the newspaper and radio industries have been crippled by the Net (online newspaper, radio sites still cost more than they make - but do they have a choice anymore?).Guess I'd just like to see one high-profile person who has a moral turnaround admit he/she was wrong in what they thought, and why it is they are changing their mind. That would work as a lesson to the rest of us - perhaps educate people and make them think. When they do it silently, it just makes people angry and they won't think about it.Look at baseball. Steroids. Big Mac wouldn't admit doing it, wouldn't implicate any other player, wouldn't even say whether he saw anyone do it (without names). Instead he says let's not talk about the past, let's move forward. Total Rupert. He is basically saying he has no issue with steroids, they are not a problem, let's ignore who did/said what and move on without exposing hypocrisy. And he wonders why the world hates him now despite his own. It's why I like Giambi. It's why everyone does. Guy broke down and apologized - called it his own mistake - didn't say exactly what for - didn't have to, we all knew, and he didn't try to deflect the attention away. That works as a lesson for those in favor of the drugs to maybe think again. After all, here's a user who did. Big Mac only accomplished saying if you don't see it, it isn't there - like Rupert's past, and the anti-choicers - which only teaching people that you can get away with whatever it is you hide.

[Toni]

Policies on sex education vary from state to state. The pelrobm with allowing parents to opt their kids out of the sex ed class is that those are often the students who need it most, and when they get pregnant, society often bears the cost of raising the children, through various kinds of aid, food stamps, etc. Teens who have babies aren't able to get the education and training they need to support their children. It's a societal pelrobm.A study years ago showed that when parents are the most adamant about their kids having sex (threatening to throw them out of the house, etc.), the kids are MORE likely to get pregnant. When kids have knowledge about sex AND information about the futures they can expect with and without children, they are more likely to take steps to avoid pregnancy.I agree that reducing unwanted pregnancies is the best way to reduce abortions.