Do Reinaldo Azevedo

23/08/2013

 às 3:45

Merchandising pró-aborto na novela “Amor à Vida”, da Globo, mente, mistifica, doutrina e demoniza a religião. É um atentado ao bom senso, aos fatos e à educação dos telespectadores. Em uma palavra: vergonhoso!

Estava programada para esta quinta uma manifestação de militantes de esquerda no Congresso Nacional em defesa do controle da mídia. Nem sei se aconteceu. Acompanhei depois o julgamento do mensalão, fiquei estudando o caso da saúde, li sobre as barbaridades na Síria e deixei de lado os pterodáctilos. Escrevi no começo da tarde um post a respeito. Perguntei, então, por que as esquerdas querem tanto controlar essa tal mídia se controlada ela já está. E citei o caso da Globo. Indaguei se havia como a emissora ser mais de esquerda — em qualquer área que se escolha, incluindo as novelas.

Vi há pouco uma cena chocante de “Amor à Vida”. Está inaugurado o merchandising militante pró-aborto. Nunca houve antes nada parecido. Como há no enredo um hospital, lugar preferencial paras as maldades de Félix, o vilão que caiu no gosto popular, eis que, do nada, chega uma paciente com hemorragia. Mobiliza-se o socorro de emergência. Um médico então diz: “Eu não posso atender!”.

A equipe tenta salvar a moça, mas em vão. Ela morre. E começa a discurseira. O médico mais velho diz que ela fez um aborto ilegal, que o procedimento foi malfeito e que a mulher morreu por isso. Vai mais longe: “Infelizmente, essa é uma das principais causas da morte de mulheres no Brasil”. É mentira! É mentira escandalosa! Já chego lá. A enfermeira, com o cadáver ainda à sua frente, quentinho, dispara: “Morte de mulheres pobres, né? Porque as ricas fazem aborto em segurança” (se a fala não é exata, tratou-se de algo ainda mais primitivo). Foi mais longe, dizendo que essas mulheres também são vítimas da miséria e da ignorância. Ainda era pouco. O médico mais velho vai, então, procurar o outro, que havia dito que não poderia fazer o atendimento.

— Por que você não quis atender a paciente?
— Porque ela fez aborto. Isso é contra as leis divinas.
O chefe lhe dá uma carraspana. O rapaz, então, reproduzindo uma caricatura do discurso religioso, emenda:
— Me recuso a atender uma pecadora!
— Você está fora do corpo de residentes deste hospital!

Vergonha
Fiquei com vergonha de assistir à cena.  As peças didáticas de Padre Anchieta para convencer os índios de que sua cultura original estava cheia de demônios eram mais complexas, mais sofisticadas, com  mais nuances. Estou lendo “Sussurros”, de Orlando Figes, sobre a vida cotidiana na URSS de Stálin. O didatismo brucutu dos comunas, nas escolas, contra os reacionários, era mais sutil e nuançado. Prometi a mim mesmo que não vejo a novela nunca mais, nem excepcionalmente, como hoje. Como vocês sabem, de hábito, estou trabalhando a essa hora. E nunca mais verei não porque ofenda as minhas convicções, mas porque ofende a minha inteligência. O merchandising social — a morte de fetos se insere nessa categoria? — tem um compromisso com a verdade.

Principal causa de mortes?

Eu não sei, ou sei, por que os abortistas precisam mentir tanto. Qual é o problema dessa gente com os fatos e os fetos? Até outro dia, os mentirosos contumazes diziam que 200 mil mulheres morriam, por ano, vítimas de aborto. Eleonora Menicucci, a abortista e ex-aborteira que é ministra das Mulheres, chegou a levar esses números a uma reunião da ONU. Em fevereiro de 2012, fiz uma conta com os dados disponíveis, todos oficiais.

Acompanhem.

Em 2010, o Censo do IBGE passou a investigar a ocorrência de óbitos de pessoas que haviam residido como moradoras no domicílio pesquisado. ATENÇÃO! Entre agosto de 2009 e julho de 2010, foram contabilizadas 1.034.418 mortes, sendo 591.252 homens (57,2%) e 443.166 mulheres (42,8%). Houve, pois, 133,4 mortes de homens para cada grupo de 100 óbitos de mulheres.

Vocês começam a se dar conta da estupidez fantasiosa daquele número? Segundo o Mapa da Violência, dos 49.932 homicídios havidos no país em 2010, 4.273 eram mulheres. Muito bem: dados oficiais demonstram que as doenças circulatórias respondem por 27,9% das mortes no Brasil — 123.643 mulheres. Em seguida, vem o câncer, com 13,7% (no caso das mulheres, 60.713). Adiante. Em 2009, morreram no trânsito 37.594 brasileiros — 6.496 eram mulheres. As doenças do aparelho respiratório matam 9,3% dos brasileiros — 41.214 mulheres. As infecciosas e parasitárias levam outros 4,7% (20.828). A lista seria extensa.

Agora eu os convido a um exercício aritmético elementar. Peguemos aquele grupo de 443.166 óbitos de mulheres e subtraiamos as que morreram assassinadas, de doenças circulatórias, câncer, acidentes de trânsito, doenças do aparelho respiratório, infecções (e olhem que não esgotei as causas). Chegamos a este número: 185.999!!!

Já começou a faltar mulher. Ora, para que pudessem morrer 200 mil mulheres vítimas de abortos de risco, é forçoso reconhecer, então, que essas mortes teriam se dado na chamada idade reprodutiva — entre 15 e 49 anos. É mesmo? Ocorre que, segundo o IBGE, 43,9% dos óbitos são de idosos, e 3,4% de crianças com menos de um ano. Então vejam que fabuloso:
Total de mortes de mulheres – 443.166
Idosas mortas – 194.549
Meninas mortas com menos de um ano – 15.067
Sobra – 233.550

Dessas, segundo os delirantes de então, 200 mil teriam morrido em decorrência do aborto — e necessariamente na faixa dos 15 aos 49 anos!!!

Cessou a mentira
Quando desmoralizei, COM NÚMEROS OFICIAIS, a mentira das 200 mil mortes, essa bobagem parou de ser veiculada no país. O doutor que disse aquela besteira na novela, fosse de verdade, seria um mentiroso, um mistificador, um vigarista. Vejam acima as principais causas da morte de mulheres no Brasil, ricas ou pobres. Se a enfermeira histérica faz seu trabalho tão bem quanto pensa, coitados dos pacientes!

Os números reais
O número de mortes maternas, no Brasil, está abaixo de 2.000 por ano! Atenção! Estou me referindo à morte de mulheres em decorrência da gravidez. O aborto, segundo dados do DataSUS, corresponde a 5% dessas mortes, entenderam? Ocorre que esse número inclui tanto o aborto espontâneo como o provocado. Assim:
a: o aborto não é a principal causa da morte de mulheres;
b: o aborto não é nem mesmo a principal causa de morte materna.

Não gosto de merchandising, de nenhuma natureza, comercial, social ou, como é o caso, ideológico. Repugna-me a ideia de que se deve pegar o telespectador distraído para, então, “pimba!”. Sabem por que jamais defenderia a sua proibição? Porque a engenharia legal para isso resultaria, com certeza, em algo ainda pior. Então que permaneça o mal menor — mas que chamo de “mal” ainda assim.

Demonização da religião
Aquele médico que se negou a atender a paciente que chegou morrendo, exibido na novela, não existe. Criou-se uma caricatura para, no fundo, demonizar o discurso religioso. Os índios caracterizados como diabos nas peças de Anchieta, no século XVI, eram personagens mais complexas e verossímeis. Imaginem se alguém formado em medicina se referiria a uma paciente terminal como “pecadora”; se diria a seu chefe que o aborto atenta “contra as leis divinas”. Usa-se, então, o discurso ridículo de um médico para ridicularizar os que se opõem ao aborto por motivos religiosos, o que é um direito num país em que há liberdade de crença.

Há um outro nível de falsificação nessa história. Existem médicos às pencas que são agnósticos, mas que se recusam a praticar o aborto mesmo nos casos em que ele é legalmente permitido. O Código de Ética Médica lhes assegura o direito de alegar objeção de consciência. Nesse caso, sua obrigação é informar a paciente dos seus direitos e encaminhá-la para um colega. “E no caso de não haver quem faça, num rincão do Brasil qualquer?” Assegurado um direito a ser conferido pelo poder público, o estado tem a obrigação de prover os meios. Que se crie, sei lá, uma central nacional, com um número de telefone, para ocorrências dessa natureza e garantia de atendimento.

Uma coisa é certa: obrigar um médico a fazer um procedimento que viola a sua consciência seria um absurdo. Mas há uma pressão nesse sentido. Que eu saiba, nem os cubanos poderão se encarregar da tarefa…  A novela entrou de forma grosseira nessa questão. “Amor à Vida” faz proselitismo em favor da adoção de crianças por gays e levou ao ar, nesta quinta, essa cena patética, mentirosa e patrulheira, sobre aborto. No Globo Repórter, a gente aprendeu que só uma família deve ser chata: a que tem papai e mamãe. Dia desses, um programa discutia a descriminação das drogas na base de quatro (a favor) a um (contra). Certamente não reproduz os percentuais que estão na sociedade.

E os pterodáctilos ainda querem fazer o controle social da mídia, muito especialmente da Globo, acusando-a, imaginem só!, de ser conservadora, reacionária. Pois é! Com todo o suposto conservadorismo e reacionarismo, um “médico” foi demitido. Deus nos livre da versão progressista. O coitado teria sido fuzilado em nome do povo e da vida.

Pode não parecer, eu sei, mas o que se viu em “Amor à Vida” foi uma manifestação absurda de intolerância. Intolerância com a divergência (os que se opõem ao aborto — e que, curiosamente, são maioria absoluta no Brasil) e intolerância com a religião, reduzida a uma patética caricatura. Deus nos livre da intolerância dos tolerantes! Sabem ser obscurantistas em nome das luzes.

Finalmente
A militância pró-aborto não tente tomar de assalto a área de comentários. Será inútil. E não porque eu me oponha à descriminação, mas porque este texto não propõe um debate de mérito. Admito, sim, uma contestação: quero que provem que os dados com os quais trabalho são falsos. Mas têm de provar. Não basta apenas repudiá-los porque eles desmontam as teses pró-aborto. Eu estou é contestando uma mentira transmitida a milhões de brasileiros.

CORREÇÃOUm colega da VEJA.com me alertou — e, depois, constatei que leitores já haviam me advertido nos comentários — que, em vez de “Amor à Vida”, chamei a novela das 21h de “Páginas da Vida”. Já fiz a correção. Não era telespectador habitual do que nunca mais verei nem ocasionalmente. E, fico sabendo, já houve uma com aquele nome, o que pode explicar a confusão. Mas também pode ser algum mecanismo de resistência que disparei sem querer. Talvez tenha me negado a aceitar que uma novela chamada “Amor à Vida” faça um proselitismo tão furioso e desinformado em favor do aborto…

Texto publicado originalmente às 23h50 desta quinta

Por Reinaldo Azevedo

Do Blog CaiaFarsa: QUEM VOTOU NO NAZISMO
MAPA N ° 1

Votos nos nazistas
(parte escura)

Votação na Alemanha,
em 1933 .

MAPA N° 2

Áreas católicas
(parte escura)

De acordo com o Censo
de 1934.

Mostra, claramente,que os católicos não votaram 
em Hitler.

Ou seja, as áreas protestantes votaram maciçamente em Hitler e
nos nazistas, ao passo que os católicos, não !!.

Roman Catholics and Immigration in Nineteenth-Century America
Julie Byrne Dept. of Religion, Duke University ©National Humanities Center

The story of Roman Catholicism in the nineteenth century IS the story of immigration. Until about 1845, the Roman Catholic population of the United States was a small minority of mostly English Catholics, who were often quite socially accomplished. But when several years of devastating potato famine led millions of Irish Catholics to flee to the United States in the mid 1840s, the face of American Catholicism began to change drastically and permanently. In the space of fifty years, the Catholic population in the United States suddenly transformed from a tight-knit group of landowning, educated aristocrats into an incredibly diverse mass of urban and rural immigrants who came from many different countries, spoke different languages, held different social statuses, and emphasized different parts of their Catholic heritage.

Many members of other faiths—Jews, Protestants, and even some Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists—arrived in the successive waves of massive immigration to the United States between the 1840s and 1920s. But Catholics from various countries were the most numerous—and the most noticed. In 1850 Catholics made up only five percent of the total U.S. population. By 1906, they made up seventeen percent of the total population (14 million out of 82 million people)—and constituted the single largest religious denomination in the country.

When your students hear the enormity of the demographic and religious shift caused by immigration, they will start to understand why so many American citizens became uneasy about the so-called "Catholic hordes." Change is always difficult, and this was a huge change. Why did things change? Why did so many Catholics come to the United States at this time? Why did the country take them? To answer these questions, you might paint for your students a scene or two of the broad Western-hemisphere trend towards economic and social "modernization." The newly centralized states of Europe and the New World were promoting capital investment in urban industries that disturbed ancient customs of farming, craft labor, and land inheritance. A new managerial "middle class" of clerks and bureaucrats was prospering in the cities, but thousands of peasants were displaced from their land and labor by new farming techniques. The Catholic citizens of Italy, Poland, parts of Germany, and the Eastern European kingdoms of what are now Slovakia and the Czech Repuclic began to cast their eyes towards America. The country had a growing world reputation for democratic ideals and work opportunity. For these peoples, as well as for French Canadian Catholics to the north of the United States and Mexican Catholics to the south, the chance for a new life free of poverty and oppression was too good to pass up. Millions of sons, fathers, and later whole families left behind their former lives and possessions and boarded crowded ships sailing for New York.

America, for its part, docked ship after ship at Ellis Island for both idealistic and practical reasons. It was the American ideal to welcome the foreigner; all the country's founding groups and many of its leading citizens had been, after all, immigrants. The motto on the Statue of Liberty, "Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor," exemplified the strong tie between immigration and freedom in the national imagination. But more practically speaking, America's new industries and booming frontier towns demanded large quantities of cheap labor. So immigration was a benefit to both sides—at least in theory.

To Think

But theory doesn't always translate into the feelings and experiences of real people in real situations. Immigration was supposed to be beneficial to the immigrant and to the country, but it also unleashed many fears, insecurities, and troubles on both sides. It might be a good idea to brainstorm with your students about the positive and negative FEELINGS that both natives and immigrants could have experienced at the time. Let the students imagine and talk about what it might have felt like for the immigrants, who didn't know "the ropes" or in many cases the language. Let them also imagine what it might have felt like for those already living in America, who saw their cities change so quickly: suddenly there was a Catholic church in every neighborhood. Immigration is, of course, still very much a part of the American reality and public debate. Some of your students may be Catholic themselves and may be surprised to hear of the former low status of the "assimilated" religion they know. Some of your students may know of immigration from firsthand experience, being immigrants or children of immigrants themselves. Others may know about immigration from news reports or experiences with neighbors. Don't hesitate to make the connections between the realities and perceptions of Catholicism and immigration then and now. Their experience of the present realities can help them understand the past, and vice versa.

Then, refocus the discussion to make the point that in the nineteenth century, the immigrants' RELIGION, Catholicism, became a focal point for these feelings about immigration on both sides. The immigrants held onto Catholicism for spiritual comfort and group identity. The older Americans blamed Catholicism for the immigrants' "foreign ways." Both sides used Catholicism as a way of resisting the other. How did the immigrants express their feelings through their faith? How did Protestant Americans use Catholicism as a "substitute" for immigration issues?

After several years in America, many Catholic immigrants became sorely disillusioned. "American Dreams" of rich farmland and easy money evaporated in the run-down, neglected quarters of big cities and died during long hours working lowpaying, backbreaking jobs. Yet sooner or later, many families managed to improve their economic situations, through luck, ingenuity, hard work, and—they strongly believed—help from God, the saints, and the Church.

For it was the Catholic Church, more than any other organization, that made a concerted effort to welcome the new Catholic immigrants. Catholic citizens helped them find jobs and homes; sisters (nuns) taught their children English in Catholic schools; priests tried to protect their political interests and shield them from a sometimes hostile Protestant environment; the local church held religious festivals and social events. It is important to stress that for the immigrants, the neighborhood Catholic church was not just a church; it was the focal point of a whole community, a whole way of life. Even if the relationship between the Church and Catholic immigrants was often far from perfect, local parishes provided millions of heartbroken, homesick immigrant men and women the familiar comforts of ritual and belief that gave their world meaning.

Students should know what parts of Catholic ritual and belief set it apart from Protestant Christianity, although it should also be emphasized that there is much more continuity than difference between the two forms of Christianity. Catholic tradition had held for centuries

1. that the institutional Church, with its highly organized hierarchy topped by the pope in Rome, was the sole source of spiritual nurture, divine authority, and final salvation;
2. that the sacraments—religious rituals like the Mass and confession—were the main means of human contact with the divine; and
3. that the saints—who, like Mary, the mother of Jesus, were holy people held up as examples by the Church—could be called upon in prayer to "intercede" for Catholics with the Father and the Son.

The reformers of the Protestant Reformation objected vehemently to these emphases, insisting instead on

1. less hierarchy in church structure,
2. the Bible rather than sacraments as the source of revelation from God, and
3. Jesus himself as the only necessary intercessor with God the Father.

For four centuries Catholics and Protestants had waged real and polemical wars against each other about these and other issues that calcified their mutually antagonistic positions. In the context of nineteenth-century America, where Bible-believing, evangelical Protestants constituted the clear majority, the Catholic minority faith, with its elaborate rituals and statues of the saints, seemed to most people very strange, even "wrong." Of course, for Catholics these were natural and familiar ways to express their faith in God. There was nothing strange about them at all. In fact, they thought Protestants were strange and "wrong."

To Protestants, the immigrants' religion was cause for great consternation. Protestants prided themselves on living in a country founded as a Protestant "light unto the world," as the Puritans put it. They felt threatened that America might soon become a "Catholic" country; they worried that the Catholic religion, with its hierarchies and traditions, had made the immigrants unsuitable for democratic and individualistic America. They even mused whether the Catholics were coming in droves in order to colonize America for the pope! The churches could try to protect the immigrants, but they could do little to counter the prejudice Catholic immigrants faced in "mainstream" America every day. Neighbors called Catholics names, employers refused to promote them, landlords rented them their worst apartments, newspapers blamed them for rising crime rates, and banks refused them loans. A popular national organization, the American Protective Association, was founded specifically to promote anti-Catholicism and other prejudices.

All this because Catholics believed a different Christianity than Protestants? Partly no, and partly yes. On the one hand, anti-Catholicism wasn't all about Catholicism; it was partly about class, too. Many people of the upper classes didn't particularly pay attention to Catholics' religion, but assumed that because the immigrants were poor, foreign, and different, that meant they were also dirty, dangerous, and lazy. Many people of the lower classes assumed the immigrants represented competition for jobs, homes, and social prestige that rightly belonged to them. On the other hand, anti-Catholic prejudice was about religion. For Catholics did become good American citizens—winning political races, organizing labor unions, opening businesses, and founding schools and hospitals. But no matter how hard Catholics strived to prove they were good, upstanding, patriotic American citizens, some Protestants would never accept them, simply because they were Catholic. This instance of naked prejudice may be a hard thing for students concerned about "equality" and "tolerance" to hear. Others may feel more sympathetic towards the Protestants' religious conviction. Again, pointing out the continuities with present-day instances of prejudice would only help to illuminate both.

Given the social stigma of being Catholic, students might naturally wonder why most Catholic people who came to this country remained Catholic. There are several reasons, all of which speak to the very teen-accessible issue of "identity"—how people have it, create it, or change it. One reason Catholics stayed Catholic is that they truly believed that Catholicism was the "right" religion, and converting to Protestantism was simply not an option. Another is that Catholicism was an "alternative," "different" religion in America at the time, and some Catholics wore that "differentness" as a badge of pride or a marker of identity in an unfamiliar environment. Finally, some stayed out of habit and culture. They were Catholics in the Old World, therefore they were Catholics in the New, and that was that.

The American public's resistance to immigration culminated in a series of immigration restriction laws passed in the early 1920s that placed quotas

 on the numbers of people allowed from each foreign country. Quotas for Catholic countries were set so low that Catholic immigration virtually halted by 1924.

Historians Debate

In some ways, the Catholic immigrants of the nineteenth century faced as much conflict within their churches as without. The debate raged between Church leaders about the best strategy to deal with the immigrants—"Americanize" them as quickly as possible, or encourage them to retain their own national language and faith customs as long as they could. The proponents of the first view, called "Americanists," tended to be theological liberals and social progressives who were quite optimistic, in the spirit of the "Gilded Age," about the compatibility between America and the Catholic religion. The advocates of the second view, considered "conservatives," tended to be traditionalists who regarded America's infatuation with the new technology, "materialism," and social reform as a dangerous context for preserving the troubled immigrants' faith. Often the immigrants themselves had their own opinions in the matter, but were caught between warring bishops. Over the long term, both the Americanists and the conservatives "won": the pope pronounced in favor of the conservatives in 1891, but as new generations were born, of course, Catholics became quite "Americanized" as aspects of the Old World devotional culture and theology were gradually left behind and shades of a new, more individualistic and democratic Catholicism appeared.

Scholars of American Catholic history have universally considered immigration by far the most dynamic force in the nineteenth-century American Church, but they continue to debate the issue of "Americanization." The magisterial histories of American Catholicism written successively by John Gilmary Shea, Peter Guilday, and John Tracy Ellis from the 1890s to the 1950s considered "Americanization" a good thing and countered popular perceptions of Catholics' unfitness for America with numerous examples of American Catholic achievement. More recent histories by Jay Dolan and Patrick Carey (1990s) reconsider the merits of "Americanization" in light of contemporary discussions of "Catholic difference" and "multiculturalism." Their work suggests that traditional immigrant Catholicism contributed to changing the definition of "America" from a nation of Anglo-Saxon Protestants to a culture of diversified regions and peoples. They also carefully distinguish between religious styles, political leanings, and social status associated with different ethnic groups within Catholicism; for example, the Irish Catholic political machines in New York were much different than German Catholic sodalities in the Midwest, though both kinds of groups grew out of the immigrant Catholic experience.

Other historians have pointed out that concepts like "Americanization" and "assimilation" assume there was a coherent "American" population, when in fact immigration itself was overshadowed and interimplicated with the great social debates over slavery and, after the Civil War, the so-called "Negro problem"—issues whose very existence proves that a homogeneous "American" population could not be taken for granted (Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome).

Other studies have taken up the history of African Americans who were themselves Catholics; this minority within a minority persevered with little attention from their Church throughout the period of European immigration (Stephen Ochs, Cyprian Davis). Some historians have found the "differences" between Catholics and Protestants in this period overplayed; both groups, for example, were implicated in a broad cultural concern to establish a "domestic" religion alongside church attendance that emphasized religious commodities in the home and family prayer (Colleen Mcdannell, Ann Taves). Still other historians have painted in great detail the complex social worlds of the immigrant neighborhoods, raising the question whether ordinary immigrant Catholics really noticed or cared about the "mainstream" Protestant world much at all (Robert Orsi).