Anne TootillEleven year old rape victim wants abortion
June 26th 2008 09:33
This is a sad case of an 11 year old girl in Romania who was raped by her uncle and a government committee who is to decide whether or not she can have an abortion.
The committee will decide this week if she can go to Britain for an abortion or to continue with the pregnancy.
The case has divided the medical community, child rights groups and the public because the girl is 20 weeks pregnant which is over the legal limit for abortions in Romania.
Her parents say they found out she was pregnant on June 2 when they took her to a doctor because she seemed unwell. She told doctors that she had been raped by her 19-year-old uncle, who has since disappeared.
Two local committees in northeast Romania where she lives have passed contradictory rulings.
One committee said the girl should be allowed to have a legal abortion in Britain, which is her parents wish, a Romanian living in Britain has volunteered to finance the costs. On Wednesday, the parents received passports.
However, the other committee ruled that because both the mother and fetus are healthy, the girl should give birth. Abortions beyond 14 weeks are illegal unless the pregnancy threatens the mother's health.
In Britain an abortion is legal up to 24 weeks if two doctors decide that the risk to a woman's physical or mental health will be greater if she continues with the pregnancy than if she ends it.
The National Child Protection Authority said the girl should be allowed to have an abortion because she is already traumatized by the experience of rape and pregnancy.
The National Doctors Council said that the rights of the fetus should be considered and the pregnancy should go ahead. They argued that abortion laws should not be liberalized further.
The Orthodox Church, to which most Romanians belong, considers abortion a crime, but this belief applies to normal circumstances, and not to incest or rape.
Health Minister Eugen Nicolaescu said the case was delicate because it involved medicine, the law and morality. A government committee will publish a decision on the girl on Friday.
I'm totally lost for words.
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Comment by Morgan Bell
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Comment by Anne Tootill
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The little Rumanian girl has to wait while all the authorities pontificate on the outcome of the rest of her life. It's disgusting and cruel.
Comment by Morgan Bell
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Comment by S.L. Bradish
Killing the baby won't erase the rape. It's a tragedy, absolutely, but compounding it by killing the other innocent victim is not the answer. There are plenty of loving families who would be delighted to adopt the child. In later years, the little mother will have to look back at her decision. It's always better to remember doing something good than to have to live with doing something wrong.
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
But the problem I see here is a young rape victim not being given the choice of an abortion.
As much as I find the whole subject of abortion distasteful, I still think that's the bottom line.
Comment by S.L. Bradish
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
But I think you need to be more flexible. Try to imagine what it would be like if your daughter was raped and found herself pregnant. You may want to keep the child but your daughter may not and she deserves a choice.
To deny her that choice is setting women back a hundred years.
Comment by RubySoho
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But she is old enough to go through a life altering process such as giving birth?
Honestly, SL sometimes I think you are Stephen Colbert in disguise.
Comment by Johnny Come Lately
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Doing something good? Like damaging her body which would not be sufficiently developed enough to give birth. Giving a baby away? Like that wouldn't do irreparable emotional damage. A baby with possible genetic deformities because of the close familial relationship? Yeah it's all good.
Let the poor little girl have the procedure and go back to be a little girl that recovers from a hideous ordeal and goes back to worrying about what dolls to play with next not going through a traumatic labour and giving birth. She is no more than a baby herself. Now that to me is the definition of destroying life.
The guy should be strung up by the testicles and tortured. I feel physically sick thinking about it.
Comment by Lord Forrest
Comment by Jessicca
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But I have to agree with abortion, even my faith doesn't approve it.
Why?
1. Health
She is 11 years old. Her body may just have developed puberty and it may not be healthy enough to go through the entire pregnancy.
2. Psychologically
Being a victim is already traumatized her and will most probably effect her for the rest of her life.
Going through pregnancy which she doesn't want from rape is another torture.
3. Morally
We kept telling that taking away the chance for the new life to grow on this Earth is cruel. Would you have thought how this would have effect the child?
"How was I brought to this world?"
"Through rape of your mom when she was 11."
Not every being is strong enough to see the positive side of the purpose brought him/her to this world. Yes, even if he/she may have the best family in the world to love and nurture the child.
Looking into why she should continue her pregnancy:
1. Health
Abortion is also dangerous and will effect the mother's health as well.
3 against 1 in my personal humble view.
But has anyone asked the girl whether she knows that she is pregnant and whether she wants to keep or abort? No one, because they think she is not old enough to think.
I tell you, kids nowadays can think a lot more (clearer) than an adult. We should also respect her decision.
Any abortion will hurt the soul of the mother. Any unwanted pregnancy torments her too. But at the end of the day, will she be able to face it and overcome it? That all leaves to family and friends to support her.
But one point I agree with SL is: this guy has to be found and "fixed" (if you know what I mean) in order to stop him from committing more crimes, and to teach him a lesson that some decisions there isn't a 2nd chance.
(Oh I am not supposed to judge but where is the discipline these days?)
This is so sad.... so sad...
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
You said
But I have to agree with abortion, even my faith doesn't approve it.
Thank you
Comment by Anonymous
What happened to that young girl was a heinous crime, and much of her life has been ripped asunder from her now. But she and the child she's carrying will be able to live full lives, however difficult and challenging as it undoubtedly looks right now.
An abortion would make the child pay the ultimate price for its biological "father's" crime but NOT the "father." As for him, well, they must have some awful jails left over from Romania's Communist era.
Comment by S.L. Bradish
If my daughter or granddaughter became pregnant as the result of rape (at any age), killing the baby would not even be a consideration.
As for the tired old line about denying an abortion being the downfall of women's rights, that's a crock of crap and a glaring cop-out. Even that awful woman who started the whole abortion fiasco learned what a monstrous mistake she had made and begged the Supreme Court to throw her "victorious Roe v Wade" into the garbage where it belongs. The actual cases of abortion being medically necessary are mighty few and far between. It's become the easiest "Plan B" to kill a child rather than face responsibility or exercize good judgment.
Men who commit rape should be put away until they're too old to be able to do it again. And those who rape children (in spite of the dispicable views of 5 members of our current Supreme Court) deserve the ultimate sentence, after being gelded with a picnic knife!
I repeat, killing the baby doesn't erase what happened. It adds a deeper level of guilt to an already bad situation.
Comment by computerfox
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
If my daughter or granddaughter became pregnant as the result of rape (at any age), killing the baby would not even be a consideration.
I'm sure you are a loving father and if your daughter got pregnant and wanted an abortion you wouldn't stand in her way if that's what she wanted.
That's what love is all about.
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
But she and the child she's carrying will be able to live full lives, however difficult and challenging as it undoubtedly looks right now.
In an ideal world this might happen but in the real world her future as a young mother alone with a baby
would be difficult to say the least.
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
"That's what love is all about?" So if my daughter or grand daughter wants to shoot up heroin I should support it because that's what she wants? Or if she wants to be a shop lifter, I should support her ambitions? How about if she wanted to become a prostitute? Should I back her up on it because I love her? That's NOT love, Anne. Encouraging and supporting bad behavior isn't love by any interpretation. Teaching the difference between right and wrong, teaching a sense of responsibility and facing the consequences of your own behavior, that's real love. And just so you know, my daughter has only has one husband (the father of her two children.) My grand daughter is a US Marine. And there is no way either of them would murder a child, for any reason!
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
An eleven year old girl has been raped and wants an abortion, I believe to deny her a choice is not helping women.
I don't know how old you are but I can remember when I was very young hearing about women bleeding to death as a result of a visit to a backyard abortionist, some fool who hadn't a clue what they were doing.
Am I wrong in thinking that you would abolish abortion altogether?
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
I know several women who killed their babies, Anne. If any one of them had bled to death I would have felt the same sorrow as I would for any cold blooded killer who got the death penalty. Sorry, murder is still murder, even with a nice antiseptic name like "procedure" or "abortion." When I hear of an abortion doctor being beaten up, run out of business or even killed, all I can think of is "what goes around comes around." Sympathy is best saved for the victims and not wasted on the perpetrators.
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
What would you do if your daughter told you she had an abortion?
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Tell me something, Anne. If your daughter beat her 2 year old to death, what would you do? Just tell her it's O.K. and support her "choice?" Would you call that love?
Comment by RubySoho
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Do not judge lest you be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. And why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
I hope you never sit on a jury, Ruby! It sounds like you'd allow any criminal, guilty of absolutely any crime, to get off scott free if they called their crime a "choice" or if you actually believe what you wrote in the previous comment. Does that mean that nothing is ever really wrong, because every single one of us has committed a sin one time or another? It's a good thing that most of society is capable of telling the difference between right and wrong, at least up to a point, isn't it, Ruby?
Comment by RubySoho
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Although, since the Bible itself is full of hypocricy and contradictions, then maybe you are really are just a typical Christian?
But really, you should at least practice what you preach. At the absolute least.
Anne thank you for posting this. You have done a good job at showing us how hypocritical and sadistic these so-called pro-lifers are. To actually argue that an 11 year old child should be forced to give birth is repugnant and most of us can see that. Never mind that the life of that little girl will be destroyed more than it has been already.
They are not "pro-life", they are merely "pro-existence".Their capacity for feeling and caring ends when a baby is born. After that they really do not give a flying you know what about the physical and mental well being of the children.
Anne you gave them the rope and they just hanged themselves.
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
There is no hypocricy in objecting to murder for the sake of convenience, Ruby. However, killing someone because their future might not be perfect is the ultimate in hypocricy. Who are you to judge that the baby might have a rough time of it? Who are you to say that a child is better off dead than alive? What gives you the right to hand down a death sentence to someone you don't even know because it's father is a jerk and it's mother is young?
My judgment supports life, yours supports death. How's that rope feeling now, Ruby? Tighter?
Comment by RubySoho
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Comment by S.L.
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Comment by Anonymous
Keep up the good fight on this, and the good fight is always going to be in defense of the ones who need defending the most in cases like this: the unborn, and that young girl, whom I think may yet wind up being manipulated into doing something she'll forever regret to many lasting sorrows--and no thanks to adults who think they mean well, but just aren't seeing a bigger picture and down a longer horizon for both of those kids.
The way Planned Parenthood Foundation's working up a new way of "packaging itself" these days, it won't be long before anybody can take their kids to a local mall in the US to say visit the local toy store only to possibly pass by a PPF.
Lovel the irony? I've been to Dachau when I was a kid living in Germany. Believe me folks, even the Nazis didn't make any attempts to gussy up their massive death factories or prison camps; save for the Haldemar Experiment. That was a gem in deception, too.
The slow-learners (that would've been me), the retarded, physically handicapped or just "inconvenient" kids whose parents could somehow cajole a local Gauleiter into "taking care" for her, would be rounded up, taken to a large brick school house, gassed through a carbon monoxide contraption and burned in the building's oven/heating system. The stench was so bad that the neighbors complained and the Nazis didn't pull this off until they conquered Poland and western Russia, etc. They only started gassing and cremating people in Dachau towards the end of the war and it wasn't just the Jews in Dachau. It was anybody deemed "inconvenient" and an enemy of the state.
And for for God's sake, do you think the Blessed Mother wasn't scared until Joseph did the right thing? And there's no where in the Bible indicating that she would've turned aside God or had that child aborted, however inconvenient or even dangerous it would've been for her to bring a baby into the world sans husband.
Rape is horrible and justice must be dealt out; but justice must also include mercy; especially for the "least among us" and weakest person involved in this tragedy: that yet to be born human child.
Comment by RubySoho
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And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why religion should be kept out of politics.
When people start reciting historical myths as fact and using them as an argument, then you know we are in trouble.
Keep talking guys. Please.
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
"Firstly, I would be horrified that any child of mine could be a murderer. I would still love her, but we'd never have a relationship again". and
"My sister murdered her twins and we haven't spoken since I found out."
My mother taught me to love and forgive others, something you obviously cannot do.
Comment by alt_ed
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Just because a female can fall pregnant doesn’t automatically mean that she can healthily carry that foetus full term. And just because girls before her have done so does not mean she should ‘have’ to!
S.L. I can only assume that it is people with views alike with your own that have contributed to the USA having double the adolescent pregnancy and birth rates of any other industrialized country.
Over the next twelve months, one million teens in the USA will become pregnant; Ninety-five percent of those pregnancies are unintended. About one third will end in abortion; one third will end in spontaneous miscarriage; and one third will continue their pregnancy to term and keep their baby. More than half of these teen mother will be 17 years or younger when they have their first pregnancy.
Funny that teens in the USA are also no more sexually active than those in Canada or Europe for instance, yet still you lead the pack as far as teen pregnancy is concerned (but sure, you can blame it on the Mormons if you like S.L.)!
Your views are ridiculous, and at the end of the day, it should be a discussion made within this girl’s family. She should discuss the issue at hand with her family, and also a child psychologist who would be able to assess the girl’s mental health and wellbeing. In the end, this girl lives in country with much poverty and limited access to even basic healthcare thus making this very young mothers chances of carrying the foetus to term even more of a risk.
Sure, terminating the pregnancy doesn’t punish the father, but if this child is forced to keep her child is that not our way of punishing her? Could we force her to love and care for the child? Could the baby’s needs, both emotionally and physically be meet by his/her 11 year old mother?
As you have mentioned S.L. there are lots of loving families wanting to adopt children… and there are plenty of children in Romania wanting a loving family;
The latest figures issued by the Romanian National Authority for Child Protection – 31 of August, 2004 state the number of children residing with substitute families or in institutions to be 81,233. One small problem though, is Romania’s ban on international adoption, which obviously limits an orphans chances of being placed with that loving family you mention S.L.
Comment by RubySoho
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In a statement read out to the government committee that decided on the case the girl had written "all I want to do is go back to school and play."
Also, the committee decided that because of the exceptional circumstances, the abortion can take place in Romania, meaning the girl doesn't have to go through the added trauma of travelling to another country and can have the procedure as soon as possible.
What a relief for that little girl and her parents.
Christian pro-life groups are now threatening to sue the government.
Comment by RubySoho
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Anyone who tries to claim that all Christians are automatically opposed to abortion is misleading you.
Comment by Anne Tootill
The Female View
I can't stop thinking about what she said "All I want to do is go back to school and play".
Finally, it's over.
Comment by RubySoho
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I think the girl will be dealing with the trauma of this experience for the rest of her life but at least now she will not be forced to go through further pain and suffering. And her family can start the long slow healing process.
I'm so glad the authorities put her mental and physical well being first. I'm so glad that they realised that this girl is only a child and that to force her to go through a process that even some adults cannot cope with would destroy any shot she had at an ordinary life. Despite the pressure they were under, they did the absolute best thing for that girl.
Comment by Morgan Bell
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and thanks for the update Ruby, im glad the girls wishes were respected