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  • Title: A callous and coercive policy.
    Author: Kissling F.
    Journal: Conscience; 1999; 20(2):12-4. PubMed ID: 12178901.
    Abstract:
    This article comments on the Vatican stand on the provision of emergency contraception to women who have been raped during the Kosovo war. The Roman Catholic Church has once again demonstrated its opposition to contraception by denying the rape victim during the Kosovo war access to emergency contraception. Such opposition signifies the church leader's lack of understanding for the reproductive rights of women. One graphic example of this lack of understanding can be found in the message Pope John Paul II sent to Bosnian Muslim women who had been raped during the 1993 conflict. The Pope urged them to turn their rape into an act of love and "accept the enemy into them, making him flesh of their own flesh" by carrying their pregnancies to term. In this article, the characterization by the church leaders on emergency contraception was given due consideration. Instead of church leaders giving raped women inaccurate information about what constitutes a pregnancy or pointing fingers to aid workers as perpetrators of violence for offering voluntary emergency contraception, the church should do better by respecting the conscience and moral rights of the women, including those who have been raped.
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