Cesareans In Lieu of Abortions?

TRIGGER WARNING
From the Associated Press:

A 9-year-old girl who was carrying twins, allegedly after being raped by her stepfather, underwent an abortion Wednesday despite complaints from Brazil’s Roman Catholic church.
Police said the stepfather has been jailed since last week.
Abortion is illegal in Brazil, but judges can make exceptions if the mother’s life is in danger or the fetus has no chance of survival.
Fatima Maia, director of the public university hospital where the abortion was performed, said the 15-week-old pregnancy posed a serious risk to the 80-pound (36-kilogram) girl.
“She is very small. Her uterus doesn’t have the ability to hold one, let alone two children,” Maia told the Jornal do Brasil newspaper.
But Marcio Miranda, a lawyer for the Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife in northeastern Brazil, said the girl should have carried the twins to term and had a cesarean section.
“It’s the law of God: Do not kill. We consider this murder,” Miranda said in comments reported by O Globo.

The story alone is unbelievably sad. She’s nine years old, the age of a U.S. third grader.
Brazil’s Cesarean rate in private hospitals is over 90%. It averages around 40% in public hospitals. The operation is seen as no big deal and apparently that goes for young child victims of rape as well.
Since I deal with the other end of the reproductive cycle, i.e., informed refusal of unnecessary surgery and intervention in pregnancy and labor, I wonder if I’ve been oblivious to a new wave of anti-choice rhetoric. In this technocratic medical climate in which c-sections are increasingly promoted by doctors as the safe and healthy alternative to vaginal birth and are usually readily available, has there been a push for women to swap one medical procedure (abortion) with another (c-section) to keep the fetus alive?
I’ve tried searching all kinds of things like “Cesarean as safe alternative to abortion” and what-not and I’m not coming up with much. I hope that it’s just isolated to a few sick Catholic church officials in Brazil who think it would be justified to sacrifice a nine year old who has probably endured rape for years with her stepfather thinking pregnancy wasn’t possible because she is so young.
Have Cesareans entered the anti-choice “alternative” agenda? Or has the argument always been there and am I just outing myself as a reproductive health n00b?

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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