Martha y Maria: Women's Lives, Women's Rights: Child Sexual Abuse in Brazil

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Child Sexual Abuse in Brazil

Today's New York Times presents a front-page update on child sexual abuse in Brazil and problems with access to safe, legal abortion:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/world/americas/28brazil.html?emc=eta1

One positive development: "...a conference of Brazilian bishops overruled Archbishop Sobrinho [his excommunication of the doctors and mother], saying that the child's mother had acted 'under pressure' from doctors who said the girl would die if she carried the babies to term, and that only doctors who "systematically" performed abortions should be thrown out of the church."

It's a strange world where this counts as good news.

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In memory of Martha Puebla & In honor of Maria Riveros

On a spring night in 2003, Martha Puebla, age 16, was shot in the face while sitting outside her home in Sun Valley, California, near Los Angeles. Her death was ordered by a gang member on trial for a murder she had witnessed.

On July 13, 2008, in San Ignacio, Paraguay, Maria Riveros took her pregnant 16-year-old daughter to the home of an obstetrician and asked her to perform an abortion. The fetus of about 4 mo. was buried outside the home, but there were complications and the next day Maria had to rush her daughter to a hospital, where a hysterectomy was performed. The obstetrician and her daughter, a nurse, were arrested and charged with performing an abortion.

This blog is dedicated to Martha, Maria and all women who courageously negotiate their lives in this world filled with gang warfare and international warfare, poverty and wealth, drug trafficking and addiction, and lack of access to birth control, legal abortion, and other health care.