http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pope-francis-suggests-contraception-can-be-condoned-in-zika-crisis/article28796324/
Using birth control to avoid Zika infection a ‘lesser evil’: Pope Francis
Pope Francis has suggested that it could be acceptable for Catholics afraid of infection with the Zika virus to use contraception.
Speaking to reporters aboard the papal plane on a flight to Rome from Mexico on Thursday, the Pope drew a distinction between the use of abortion by pregnant women infected with the virus, and the use of birth control to prevent a pregnancy, calling abortion “an absolute evil.”
A reporter on the plane asked the pontiff how he felt about advice from some authorities that pregnant women exposed to Zika have abortions or avoid getting pregnant, and whether contraception would be the lesser of two evils in such a situation, a Vatican press attaché told The Globe and Mail.
The Pope replied that abortion would not be acceptable even in the case of fetuses with severe brain defects, as the Zika virus is believed to be causing in Brazil and perhaps other South American countries.
“Abortion is not the lesser of two evils,” Pope Francis said, in comments translated from Italian by the press attaché, Rev. Thomas Rosica. “It is a crime. It is to kill someone in order to save another. This is what the Mafia does. It is a crime, an absolute evil.”
Avoiding pregnancy, he said, was a “lesser evil.”
The Pope then made reference to a previously obscure papal dispensation, made by Paul VI, (who served from 1963 to 1978), in which he apparently permitted Catholic nuns who were facing the threat of rape while serving during conflict in the then-Belgian Congo to use oral contraceptives.
“Don’t confuse the evil of avoiding pregnancy, by itself, with abortion,” the Pope said. “Abortion is not a theological problem; it is a human problem, it is a medical problem. You kill one person to save another, in the best-case scenario. Or to live comfortably, no?”
The pontiff’s remarks come as the World Health Organization, which has declared Zika an international emergency, has urged greater access to and use of contraception in the 24 countries where the mosquito-borne virus is endemic; Zika was recently found to be sexually transmissible.
The virus was previously believed to be a mild cousin of diseases such as dengue fever and chikungunya. But last year, doctors in Brazil’s northeast began to notice a swell of cases of babies with microcephaly (small heads) caused by abnormal brain development and they eventually linked the defects to a newly virulent strain of Zika.
The country has now confirmed 508 cases of microcephaly related to an infectious agent, and in 41 that agent has been confirmed as Zika; thousands of other cases are under clinical review. The virus has been found in the amniotic fluid of women carrying babies with the abnormalities, and in the brain tissue of an aborted fetus with the condition.
The governments of five affected countries have urged women not to get pregnant until the threat of Zika has passed – yet several of these, including Brazil and El Salvador, are also countries that criminalize the termination of pregnancy.
Fear of the virus has many Brazilians debating their country’s outright ban on abortion. Wealthy Brazilians who wish to terminate pregnancies can buy safe if illegal abortions, but poor women, who are most affected by Zika, don’t have that option.
“We applaud what the Pope said, with restrictions,” Rosangela Talibi, of the group Catholics for the Right to Decide, said from Sao Paulo. “The church should be doing this, not as an exception, but recognizing reproductive health is a right. ... At the same time as he opens this door, he says, ‘Abortion, no way.’ Demanding that a woman who has been contaminated with Zika continue her pregnancy, when the fetus probably has some sort of alteration, seems to us like an attack on women’s mental health.”
Sister Monique Bourget, a nun from Montreal who is technical director of a large teaching hospital in Sao Paulo, said the news heartened her. “I think there’s a longing from all the people working in the health-care field and involved with the church that there could be an opening,” she said.
“Pope Francis is someone who is living in the real world and who knows people with a lot of difficulty, and knows the challenges of the real world – this is one of them,” said Sister Bourget, who works at Santa Marcelina Hospital. “This shows the merciful face of the church. If there’s a couple living their faith and in a situation that needs protection, we have to open up our hands.”
Brother Isidoro Mazzarolo, a professor of biblical theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, said the Pope’s comments should not be seen as a major change in doctrine, noting that a shift toward proscribing fewer aspects in family life had been evident in the church for some time. “But this is a novelty because there are more conservative clergy that still rejected this idea,” he said, and the Pope’s remarks may quell some of their resistance.
At the peak of the African AIDS pandemic a decade ago, there was bitter division within the church over the use of condoms to prevent HIV infection; the official church position forbid it even between couples where one partner was infected and the other not. Individual church leaders broke with Rome to urge condom use, but the then-pope did not issue a dispenation.
Father Rosica said Pope Francis was responding to “a crisis situation where you want to prevent death, and in this contraception issue, it’s a temporary thing, make sure you separate that from the issue of abortion.”
He said the contraception comments were unsurprising coming from this pope, whom he called “a pastor with his feet on the ground” who is “unafraid to raise questions that many people have shut the door on.”
The Zika issue is “contraception for a medical thing, to save lives,” he said. “Contraception in many people’s minds is not to save lives, it’s to increase pleasure, to give people license and freedom, and somehow the truth is in the middle.
“The Pope is an extremely conservative pastor,” he added. “But by being a good pastor, he has his ear to the ground and he knows people. This is the complexity of life.”
With a report from Manuela Andreoni
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