Catholic Church butts in on child rape victims rights

I have mixed feelings about abortion. I am aware of the loss of life at its very early stages of its existence but I am also aware of the problems facing women who have been raped.

I constantly hear the arguments of pro-lifers that by aborting a child during the period of gestation, this could result in the loss of future scientists like Einstein or composers like Beethoven. That is of course quite true. It is equally true however that if the mothers of Hitler and Stalin had aborted those two offspring, over 60 million lives would not have died needlessly in the last century.

My mother was raped in 1933 and I am the direct result of that rape. She didn’t abort me and as fate would have it, at the age of 22, I started a new organization in scouting that is called Venturers. Hundreds of thousand boys and girls have been and still are in Venturers in 14 countries. I later became an advisor to the United Nations on justice and human rights and I am the father of the U.N. bill of rights for young offenders, a bill of rights that has an effect on millions of children worldwide. I also brought compensation to innocent persons imprisoned in Canada and also brought free 24-hour legal counsel to citizens arrested in Canada and taken to the police stations.

None of these occurrences would have happened had I been aborted.

Now you can understand why I have mixed emotions about abortion. Notwithstanding that, I truly sympathize with victims of rape and pregnant women whose mental and physical health are at risk and yet, at the same time, I am also mindful of the question that begins with, “What if instead of aborting the child……?

Life is full of surprises and every time couples mate, they take their chances that their offspring will be born normal or alternatively, abnormal. Every parent prays that his or her children will grow up as honest and bright citizens who become scientists, doctors, teachers and missionaries etc, but life being as it is, some grow up into monsters, such as serial killers, mass murderers, life-long thieves and tyrants etc.

I have always maintained that parental upbringing and choice of friends is what really determines a child’s behavior and its future. If I am right, then the argument that fate determines whether or not a child brought into this world is what determines its future; is not a valid argument.

Abraham Lincoln and Conrad Black are two examples of this. Both were born with normal brains and both were and are achievers. Abraham Lincoln as a small child lived in a small log cabin and Conrad Black as a small child lived in a sumptuous home. Both became leaders because they were and are very intelligent. However, Abraham Lincoln became a great leader and a president who saved his nation whereas Conrad Black became a leader and president who stole large sums of money from his corporation.

I believe that there are times when abortion is necessary. Aside from the risk to the mother with respect to physical or mental well-being, there is the issue of rape.

In every militarized conflict, women are systematically raped or sexually assaulted. Some feminist scholars and advocates contend that rape is not about sex, but rather about power and the dehumanization of women. Whatever the motive that is in the minds of the rapists, the end result is for the most part, the creation of a child.

Many orphaned teenage girls, thirteen and older have been raped in Darfur in Africa and the last thing they need is to have the responsibility of bringing up a child at that tender age, especially in a country where babies are dying from starvation by the thousands every day. But according to the Catholic Church, to put it in its simplest terms, “So sad, too bad. Have the child anyway.”

This is the Church that is supposedly preaching mercy and forgiveness. In reality, the leaders of that Church condemns the orphaned thirteen-year-old rape victim if she chooses to have an abortion and insists that she give birth to the child that was inseminated into her by a brutal rapist. Yes, it is possible that her unwanted child could grow up to be a leader of his nation, such as Nelson Mandela but that isn’t what is on the teenage mother’s mind. She is having a tough enough time trying to survive without being saddled with the burden of keeping her newborn baby alive also.

After three years into its worldwide campaign to end violence against women, Amnesty International finally concluded that rape and enforced impregnation are not the tragic but inevitable outcome of war. They are, in fact, a tool of war – happening today with harrowing frequency in Darfur – and a grave abuse of women's human rights. That organization decided that couldn't continue to turn a blind eye. In 2005, the organization began a two-year consultation on abortion access with its 2.2 million members around the world.

One of its new policies that was developed from their study was to lobby for access to abortion for women who became pregnant as the result of rape or incest or when their life or health is in danger. Now we all know what the Catholic Church feels about abortions.

The ink had barely dried on the new policy when it was heatedly denounced by Cardinal Renato Martino, a senior cardinal at the Vatican, who called on Catholics around the world to withdraw their support and donations from Amnesty International. He said that when the founders of Amnesty International founded the movement, their mission was clear – ‘to witness to the inalienable rights of all human beings,’ and that included the unborn. I strongly doubt that the founders of Amnesty had the ‘unborn’ in mind when they were founding that organization. In fact, nowhere in its Statute, is there the mention of the word, ‘unborn’.

I do not think it is the place of cardinals to tell victims of child rape that they cannot abort their unwanted babies before they are born unless these cardinals are prepared to direct the Church to care for the mothers and their children; and that isn’t happening.

If Catholicism is to appeal to future generations, its leaders must reformulate the Church's doctrines and dogmas so that they are meaningful to the postmodern minds. They must be more aware of the suffering endured by rape victims and stay out of their lives unless they are prepared to care for them more than just spiritually.

As I see it, the Vatican is playing the role of a busybody and is doing more harm than good by condemning Amnesty International on the grounds that Amnesty International advocates a way in which child victims can be relieved of the burdens thrust into them by their rapists.