CATHOLIC CHURCH leaders in Colombia and Argentina issued powerful attacks on abortion last week, after terminations were carried out on young girls in both countries.

In Colombia, the dispute over an 11-year-old rape victim (Church in the World, The Tablet, 26 August) was finally resolved when the Constitutional Court assured doctors that, in this case, there was no need for them to see the full text of the Court’s ruling in favour of abortion before carrying out the procedure. Colombia’s first legal termination, using drugs, was performed at Bogotá’s Simón Bolívar Hospital on 24 August, as protesters chanted and waved banners outside.

A statement issued by the Colombian bishops’ conference condemned the ruling, argued that there were better alternatives, and said that submitting the girl to a medical termination was like violating her all over again. In addition to cases of rape, abortions may be carried out legally in Colombia only when the mother’s life is in danger or the foetus is seriously malformed.

In Argentina, the bishops’ conference published a document entitled A Matter of Life and Death after the courts ruled that abortions should be carried out on two mentally disabled rape victims, in La Plata, near Buenos Aires, and the western city of Mendoza. The bishops’ declaration was read out in churches all over Argentina on 27 August. “There is no difference between crushing the skull of a tiny creature that has just been created and murdering a child playing in the street,” it said.

The Argentine penal code uses brutal terminology: when an “idiot or demented” woman has been raped, there is no penalty for carrying out an abortion.