In Brazil, Pope Talks Tough On Abortion

(NEWSER) - President Obama told Pope Benedict XVI yesterday that he would make every effort to reduce the number of abortions in the US, according to a Vatican spokesman. Bioethics and life issues were the focus of the men's 40-minute talk yesterday. The pontiff gave the president a booklet explaining the church's opposition to abortion and stem cell research, Reuters reports. More»

Girl has popular support

(NEWSER) - Brazil’s president today attacked the archbishop who excommunicated the doctors who performed an abortion on a 9-year-old rape victim. The girl had allegedly been impregnated with twins by her stepfather, who was not disciplined when Jose Cardoso Sobrinho excommunicated the girl’s mother and her doctors. “In this case, medicine is more right than the Church,” said President Luiz Inacio da Silva. More»

Cheaper pills give poor women same right to family planning, says president

(NEWSER) - Just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI decried contraception as a threat to the future of Latin America on his visit to Brazil, Brazil's president announced that the government would subsidize birth control pills at private pharmacies so poor women can have "the same right that the wealthy have to plan the number of children they want." More»

(NEWSER) - A group of House Democrats bridled at Pope Benedict's recent suggestion that politicians who support abortion rights should be excommunicated, The Hill reports. Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut led 18 legislators in condemning the Pope's comment, which "offends the very nature of the American experiment," according to their statement. More»

Also, contraception and secularism

(NEWSER) - Pope Benedict XVI blamed both capitalism and Marxism for Latin America's problems in a speech yesterday in Brazil, the world's most Catholic nation. Benedict blamed Marxism for "a painful destruction of the human spirit," but also worried that capitalism gives rise to "degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness." More»