The San Francisco Chronicle quotes the relevant archbishop as denying he was about to excommunicate everybody related to the abortion case, the first legal one in the country.
A news report that a cardinal threatened doctors who performed an abortion with excommunication sparked controversy Wednesday and a denial from the prelate.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo denied saying that the Vatican will excommunicate the doctors who performed Colombia’s first legal abortion on an 11-year old girl allegedly raped by her stepfather.
“I have not said that, nor has the Holy See, nor have I thought it,” Lopez Trujillo, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, said in an interview with Caracol Radio.
Apparently it’s not the Church that is trying to create mayhem here, but one anti-choice media outlet that would like the hierarchs to pay more attention to the doctrine that every innocent life ought to be protected until birth (note that murder doesn’t get you excommunicated; only abortion does).
So it’s even better news than I thought. The Church not only was powerless to prevent the abortion, but also appears to have to show restraint in dealing with it.
Abstract Nonsense 