Madonna and Child

Child rights groups in Romania have had to appeal for tolerance among the purveyors of Christian love because an eleven-year-old victim of rape and incest has been generously granted the right to her own uterus. The girl was allegedly raped by her nineteen-year-old uncle, who has since disappeared. Twenty Christian Orthodox pressure groups have threatened to press charges - over the abortion, of course, not the rape; they have apparently offered "material, spiritual and psychological help" in ensuring that the radically immature mother and her unwanted child learn to bear their crosses with fortitude. They have even offered to raise the potential child in a church institution, assuming it survives the pregnancy which they wish to impose upon a child who is actually here; no price is too high for an eleven-year-old to pay if it means another orphan for Jesus. The official position of the Romanian Orthodox church is that "the decision should be left to the girl's family", who did such a splendid job of protecting her in the first place.