Is compassion ever "bogus"?

The fanatical anti-abortion wing in Roman Catholicism has the knives out for Archbishop Renato Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and the Vatican's top ethics official.  Five of the academy's 159 members--3% of the membership--issued a statement to the press calling for his removal.   

The issue relates to Fisichella's critique of a Brazilian archbishop's response to a 9-year-old girl's abortion last year.  The girl had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather.  Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife excommunicated the girl's mother and the doctors involved (but not the stepfather), saying the abortion was "a crime in the eyes of the church."  The case received worldwide attention at the time, and much comment.  National Catholic Reporter:

Fisichella, in an article published March 15 in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, reiterated the church's teaching on the serious evil associated with direct abortion and the penalties involved. But he also wrote that the local archbishop had put too much emphasis on the punishment of automatic excommunication incurred by the girl's parents and the doctors who carried out the abortion and didn't show enough pastoral care or compassion for the people involved.

Fisichella's article also said that the Brazilian doctors didn't deserve excommunication because they were saving the girl's life. Nicole Winfield, in the Washington Post, said, "The call for mercy sparked heated criticism from some academy members who said it implied the Vatican was opening up to so-called 'therapeutic abortion' to save the mother's life."  Monsignor Michel Schooyans, one of the five signatories to the press release calling for Fisichella's ouster, accused Fisichella of "bogus compassion."

One wonders:  What would Jesus do?  Would he show compassion to this girl?  Or would he appeal to the rules?  Would he add further torment to her life?  Or would he intervene on her behalf?

Comments

[Hypatia]

My understanding is that in such hard cases Church doctrine does not allow privileging the life of the girl or woman over that of the fetus. Both of them have to take their chances and if the woman's health or life is at risk that's her problem. In practice this means that the life of the woman is a secondary consideration and she must carry out her function as a vessel for delivery and suffer and/or die if need be. There can be no exceptions for rape or incest and indeed if you accept that a woman exists to serve the gestating fetus, then there shouldn't be.

[John Petty]

I hold to the philosophy that you shouldn't let the rules keep you from doing the right thing.