Month: February 2016

The over­all gist of the pope’s response seems to be: Abor­tion is always and every­where evil, but there are lic­it means to avoid preg­nan­cy. I would like to think that by “avoid­ing preg­nan­cy” in the case of Zika, the pope means absti­nence dur­ing fer­tile peri­ods. But the dif­fi­cul­ty here is that the only spe­cif­ic method of avoid­ing preg­nan­cy any­one brings up dur­ing the exchange is con­tra­cep­tion — and it is Pope Fran­cis who intro­duces it into the dis­cus­sion, not the reporter. Anoth­er dif­fi­cul­ty: Paul VI nev­er allowed nuns in dan­ger of rape to use con­tra­cep­tion.