I was at a small gathering of members of Elmslie Church last night and a debate followed the presentation by a visiting pastor on “Salt”.

Like most debates the subject broadened out past the confined barriers of the original subject matter although it was to a degree included. One of the people there spoke somewhat scathingly of the United Church waiting for the inadequacies of the Cayman Islands Ministers Association to speak out on subjects that are against Christian thinking.

It is not just The United Church of the Cayman Islands.

We keep silent most of the time when we should not. Our salt has lost its saltiness, or it sits in the container waiting for us to open and shake it.

Joan wrote a piece here last week on the Cayman Islands being Paradise and quite rightly she got a lot of praise for it.

I have to echo what she said, and you all should, especially women and those who advocate women’s rights, and there is a reason I am saying this.

We published a story today under the title “A 19-year-old rape victim in El Salvador is being sent to prison because she delivered a stillborn”.

The story is horrifying but not enough for us to protest in the thousands like they did in Germany last week at the G20 Summit.

And if you protest in El Salvador you risk getting a long prison sentence for your pains.

You see, n El Salvador, women can be charged for murder and other related charges even when a pregnancy is the result of rape, incest or when the life or health of the pregnant woman or girl is at risk.

It would appear the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador are quiet about this.

And what about the Roman Catholic Church elsewhere in the world?

And what about ALL the Christian Churches in the world?

What about the advocates of Human Rights?

What about all the women across the world who marched in support of Women’s Rights?

Is it a case as long as it is not in my back yard?

It could not happen here but with the closing of the ranks against abortions, no matter what, in the USA, is it only a matter of time?

People make rules that seem right when they are made but have horrifying outcomes for the victims caught up in them. And the law makers look the other way when that happens, unless the people protest en mass.

The law that was enacted against the 19 year old rape victim was was brought in in 1998 and criminalises all forms of abortion and some women can be jailed for 40 years.

UN officials have pleaded with lawmakers to overturn the strict rules that has fallen on deaf ears.

Amnesty’s Americas Director Erika Guevara-Rosas said the law is ‘causing nothing but pain and suffering to countless women and girls and their families’.

And that is it. A teenager is raped and jailed for delivering a stillborn, which she said happened only because she didn’t know she was pregnant. Understandably I would say as she is a rape victim!

And being raped didn’t even come into the special mitigating circumstances by the judge. It will never happen to him. And, I expect, it was men who made the rule anyway.

Thank goodness I live here in the Cayman Islands.

If I lived in El Salvador I would have been taken off to prison by now.

And yet, the law could be changed in El Salvador. People have the power. The Roman catholic church there is powerful.

However, they seem to have forgotten that word – LOVE. Jesus did not intend any woman to give birth to a child because of RAPE.

How can any of us forget that?

We can keep silent. And that seems to be the golden rule.