Anti-abortion politics and pregnant children

Brazil's Archbishop Emeritus Jose Cardoso Sobrinho -- best known for his efforts to prevent a raped nine-year-old pregnant with her stepfather's twins from receiving an abortion and his immediate public declaration of the excommunication of her mother and others involved in the abortion -- proclaimed last week that pro-abortion candidates "cannot represent honest citizens."

That's a long public step beyond the private denial of communion to pro-choice Catholic political figures in this country -- a practice Randall Terry would like to see in widespread use.

Agree or disagree, it is nonetheless an honest expression of the doctrine which underlay the conflict over the nine-year-old Brazilian girl's abortion.

Catholic figures have since protested that there was no medical necessity involved. But it is not clear that for Catholic clergy the debate was fundamentally over medical necessity, as senior Vatican official was quoted as saying at the time:

"We have laws, we have a discipline, we have a doctrine of the faith," the official says. "This is not just theory. And you can't start backpedaling just because the real-life situation carries a certain human weight."

Remember that the Vatican's top bioethics official, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who argued in the Vatican newspaper that human and theological "mercy" should have been applied to those involved in the abortion, saw his view rejected in a "clarification."