Brazil answers pope on abortion: individual choice (Roundup)

May 9, 2007, 19:27 GMT

Rome/Sao Paulo - Brazilian officials Wednesday drew a line in the sand on the abortion issue after Pope Benedict XVI stirred controversy with his remarks aboard the plane taking him to Brazil.

Benedict, answering reporters' questions, backed Mexican bishops who threatened to excommunicate Catholic politicians who supported liberalization of Mexico City's abortion law.

But Brazilian Health Minister Jose Gomez Temporao, who said women are often left alone in their situation with support from the father, supported a more liberal approach. He stressed that the issue of abortion is 'up to each person's faith' and that society in Brazil is characterized by abundant 'freedom of religious expression.'

'Debate in the field of philosophy, ethics, religion, in the field of morals is legitimate, but the minister has to focus on the field of public health,' said Gomez Temporao.

Pro-choice activists have been demonstrating in Brasilia ahead of Benedict's arrival.

The Brazilian minister noted that the discussion had 'a macho tone' about it.

'Women have to talk, be heard. Women, in most cases, find themselves alone at a time like that. Unfortunately men do not get pregnant - if they got pregnant this question would have been solved a long time ago,' Gomez Temporao claimed.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, set to meet the pope on Thursday, said Tuesday that he is personally against abortion but noted that 'no one has an abortion as an option or for pleasure.'

Brazilian law currently allows abortion in the first three months of pregnancy, but only when there is a danger for the mother's life or when the pregnancy is the result of rape. Congress is studying two bills for more permissive legislation, but violations to the current law can be punished with up to three years in prison.

According to Gomez Temporao, some 2,000 legal abortions are carried out each year in Brazil. He cited a non-governmental organization in the United States, which estimates that every year there are some 1.1 million clandestine abortions in Brazil.

'But I would multiply those figures times five,' the minister claimed.

Gomez Temporao added that at least 250.000 women had to be treated in the Brazilian public health system for illegal abortions gone wrong.

A study by the consulting firm Datafolha said in March that 65 per cent of Brazil's population wants the law to remain unchanged.

Benedict said the Mexican bishops' position was neither new nor 'arbitrary' as 'the killing of a child is incompatible with feeding oneself of Christ's body, according to Italy's Ansa news agency.

However, his spokesman, Federico Lombardi later fine-tuned the remarks, saying the pope 'had never intended to excommunicate anyone.'

'Politicians who promote pro-abortion bills exclude themselves from taking part in the Eucharist, but they are not excommunicated,' Ansa quoted Lombardi as saying.

According to Canon Law, people who procure or act as an accomplice to abortion are placed outside the Church (excommunicated) 'latae sententiae' (automatically) and can no longer receive the sacraments.

Asked more generally about his first trip to Latin America, Benedict expressed concern at the growing number of Catholics who were joining Protestant evangelical groups, but said their popularity nevertheless showed there was 'a thirst for God.'

'The General Assembly of Bishops wants to find convincing answers (to this issue),' Benedict was quoted as saying.

The head of the Catholic Church is making his fifth trip abroad since his April 2005 election. In previous trips outside Italy, Benedict visited his native Germany, Poland, Spain and Turkey.

While in Brazil, the pope is scheduled to hold an open-air mass in Sao Paulo, canonize Brazil's first native-born saint, visit a drug rehabilitation centre in Guaratingueta and open a conference of bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Church officials said the pope planned to speak out against abortion, poverty and social inequality during his stay in Latin America, where nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics live.

Benedict is accompanied by his secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, as well as several cardinals from South America, and is expected back in Rome on May 14.