Friday, August 10, 2007

Sudan Death

I've a largish pile of stuff I've been meaning to get round to. In hot weather, my motivation slumbers and only the essentials get grudgingly done, and everything else goes into the pile.

Thanks to the Catholic Church's despicable posturing, the urgent Amnesty Darfur Appeal leaflet has now been rescued from this limbo.

Regular readers of this blog (yes, both of you) will know of my attachment to the Darfur situation. I know Iraq is a bigger humanitarian disaster, but Darfur is a no-brainer - there are bad guys and victims and we need to help the victims while going after the bad guys.

The Catholic Church (the ultimate "no-brainer" if ever I saw one), however, say that the victims need to be further victimised by having their right to abortion removed, even in cases of sexual violence or where the life of the mother or her health is very seriously threatened.

As a man, I find it difficult to imagine just how shattering a rape is for a woman, even in a developed country with hospitals, enough food, social services and a protecting police force. The concept of being a undernourished, traumatised, powerless, pregnant victim of a rape in a famine-hit kill-zone must be yet a stage further beyond comprehension.

What right do well-fed old white men have to restrict the kinds of people qualified to help the world's most pained people ? And this is a well-fed old white man saying it.

Amnesty suggest a number of ways that we can help. None of them seem controversial or unscriptural to me. But then I'm not a sanctimonious woman-hating hypocrite who would let my prejudices get in the way of doing the right thing.

1 comment:

Kenny said...

All I can add to this is that you're dead right -- it is a complete disaster (the kind of which we ignore because it's not in our economic interests) -- sickening.