Vatican petitioned over rape girl From BBC World NEWS

More than 25,000 people in Spain have asked the Roman Catholic Church to excommunicate them. Their move is in support of a Nicaraguan couple who were thrown out of the Church for allowing their young daughter to have an abortion after she was raped.

I’ve been following this case since it was in the originally news through disbelief that the state were going to force a nine year old rape victim to keep the baby to resigned head-shaking that the same state only backed down when she was four months pregnant and both she and the unborn child were in danger of painful death. I was dully unsurprised when the Vatican excommunicated the girl, her family and the doctors. In a part of the world where excommunication still has some meaning, you can rely on it being used as a weapon of revenge at every opportunity.

The headline above is incredible: 25,000 saying a big fuck you to the Holy Roman Empire. It’s like voting with your feet.