If Brazilian Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho had had his way, an innocent nine-year-old girl would be living out a death sentence now.

Carrying twins after being raped by her stepfather, the girl underwent an abortion after complaining of stomach pains four months into the pregnancy. Sobrinho's humane and Christian response? He excommunicated the girl's family, excommunicated the doctors who performed the abortion, and on being told that the medics had acted within the law, announced: "The law of God is above any human law." He then went on to say: "Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be an innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely innocent. Taking that life cannot be ignored." I wonder how the death of a nine-year-old would have sat on his conscience.

Unfortunately Sobrinho isn't alone in his antediluvian thinking. Since Daniel Ortega did a deal with the Catholic church and outlawed abortion in return for votes two years ago, countless Nicaraguan women have died. What both these men fail to realise is, that whether abortion is outlawed or not, whether their Gods consider it a crime or not, women will always try and find a way to terminate dangerous pregnancies. And if they don't, if women listen to their preachers and look to faith to see them through, the chances are, as would probably have been the case for the nine year old girl, both mother and baby will fail to survive the birth.

And the story's the same across the globe. Wherever religion and its patriarchs rule, women's lives are in danger: wherever abortion is outlawed because the religious police deem it a crime against the innocent, thousands upon thousands of women suffer the fatal consequences of religious men's misogynistic edicts.

It's estimated that 68,000 (pdf) women die every year as a result of unsafe abortions, 97% of those in developing countries; millions more women suffer complications, which in many cases have long-term consequences and often result in permanent disabilities. Yet despite the death toll and the maiming, the Catholic church, along with the religious right, continues to advocate abstinence programmes as the only form of family planning it's prepared to endorse. Pope Benedict XVI even went so far as to praise the Nicaraguan government for its hardline anti-abortion stance, saying he wanted to express his appreciation to Nicaragua for its position on social issues, "especially respect for life, in the face of considerable internal and international pressure."

For those of us outside of any church, this statement along with numerous others from the men of the cloth says one thing and one thing only: to the men of religion, women's lives simply do not matter: "respect for life" never ever means "respect for a woman's life."

As far back as 1970 Robin Morgan wrote in her introduction to Sisterhood is Powerful:

Although every organised patriarchal religion works overtime to contribute its own brand of misogyny to the myth of woman-hate, woman-fear, and woman-evil, the Roman Catholic church also carries the immense power of very directly affecting women's lives everywhere by its stand against birth control and abortion, and by its use of skilful and wealthy lobbies to prevent legislative change. It is an obscenity - an all-male hierarchy, celibate or not, that presumes to rule on the lives and bodies of millions of women.

Nearly 40 years on, and it's amazing how little has changed.

I'm getting past the point now of believing that it's simply men's interpretation of their holy books that's the issue, and not the foundational texts of their faiths that are also at fault. To paraphrase the US-based Freedom from Religion Foundation: the Bible itself is a handbook for the subjugation of women. But then the Bible, like religion, was created by men for men, and has been used ever since its inception as a tool to keep women in their place.

In response to a piece I wrote recently about anti-feminist religious movements such as the True Woman movement in the States, Jeff Robinson of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood said:

Little does she know that she fights not merely against patriarchy, but against an invincible champion whose certain victory purchased for her a season of amnesty called 'today' in which she and her views might be made new.

Little does Robinson know that the patriarchy and his mythical invincible champion are one and the very same thing.