First of all, Pope Francis is pretty cool, right? Well, I mean he did tell Donald Trump that he isn’t Christian and I’m sure that will sting the majority of Trump’s supporters. Now, he is turning his back on the conservatives even more so and just stated that artificial contraception should be viewed “as the lesser of two evils” for women with the Zika virus. Sorry, what?

Well, to justify it he compared it to the decree issued by Pope Paul VI which said nuns in Africa could use birth control due to the threat of rape. He carried on:

Avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one, such as the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear. I would also ask doctors to do their utmost to find vaccines against these mosquitoes that carry this disease. This needs to be worked on.

Although the Catholic Church deems the only acceptable form of birth control as abstinence, they have permitted certain forms of natural family planning such as the rhythm method in 1968. The Pope before our current one, ol’ Benedict XVI said that condoms were permissible in exceptional circumstances. Those circumstances? If the intention of using them is to avoid the transmission of viruses like HIV rather than birth control.

But now that the Zika virus has become a high concern in prominent Catholic areas of South and Latin America, the Vatican has intervened. Although they have said that pregnant women with the virus are not allowed to have abortions, Pope Francis also said that Catholics shouldn’t “breed like rabbits”:

Not only is increased access to abortion and abortifacients an illegitimate response to this crisis, but since it terminates the life of a child it is fundamentally not preventative.

Regardless of the connection to the Zika virus, it is a fact of human existence that some children develop conditions like microcephaly, and that these children deserve to be protected and cared for throughout their lives, in accordance with our obligation to safeguard all human life, healthy and disabled, with equal commitment, leaving no one behind.

However, abortion is illegal in many Latin American countries where the Zika virus is most prevalent.

[source: independent]