Zika makes Vatican soften stand on birth control

The crisis is putting pressure on Church doctrine that bans all forms of contraception, and has even stoked a debate over abortion in many conservative Latin American nations. Ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to Mexico, a senior Vatican official said he did not expect any change to the Church’s position on birth control and Catholic scholars also said it was unlikely.

However, a ray of hope has emerged, after the Pope appeared to suggest the Church could soften its ban on contraception for women as they face the Zika crisis. 

“Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil”, Francis told reporters on the papal plane as it returned to Rome following his tour of Mexico. He said there is a precedent of exceptional dispensations allowing women to use contraception, citing a decades-old case of Pope Paul VI permitting nuns in Africa to use birth control pills because they risked being raped in political conflicts.  

The Pope did not elaborate further and did not indicate if the faithful who want to avoid pregnancies amid a Zika epidemic would have the Church’s explicit blessing to do so or if priests at the local level would just look the other way, at least until the Zika situation becomes clearer. 

Francis did make clear there would be no change to the Church’s position on abortion. “It is a crime. It is an absolute evil.” 

About 65 per cent of Brazilians are Catholics and polls consistently show more than three-fourths of the population reject changes to laws that only allow abortion, but they overwhelmingly approve of using condoms when it comes to preventing diseases.