HEALTH-MEXICO:
Church Complains It Was 'Ridiculed' Over Pill

Diego Cevallos


MEXICO CITY, (IPS) - Roman Catholic Church officials in Mexico complain that they have been ridiculed by the media for opposing the morning-after pill, an emergency contraceptive, while Catholics are increasingly using birth control and have turned a deaf ear to threats of excommunication.

The Church's weekly publication Desde la Fe protested that critics and the media have tried ''to lynch and ridicule'' the Church and depict it as ''ignorant and as an enemy of women and their rights'' because it asked the government to reverse its recent decision to allow the pill to be distributed in public health clinics and hospitals.

But the Feb. 8 article stated that the Church ''has not kept silent, and will not refrain'' from criticising ''abortive'' methods promoted by the health authorities.

The National Association of Pharmacies reported that in the last week of January and the first week of February, sales of contraceptives rose between five and 10 percent, and attributed the increase to the controversy sparked by the government's decision to add the pill to its list of authorised family planning methods.

Mexico's Secretariat of Health published new family planning guidelines on Jan. 21 that included the morning-after pill as one of the contraceptives to be distributed in its health care centres. The list had last been updated in 1993.

The Secretariat of Health will also recommend the pill, through its health brigades, to rape victims and women who have had unprotected sex and are fearful of becoming pregnant.

There was an immediate outcry from Church officials, who threatened to excommunicate any woman who knowingly took the morning-after pill, which they see as no different from abortion.

On the other hand, women's groups and other sectors applauded the government endorsement of the morning-after pill, which is approved by the World Health Organisation and has been available in Mexico for two years.

The criticism from the Church and the anti-abortion group Provida continued even though authorities provided scientific evidence showing that the pill is not an abortifacient, but merely prevents a fertilised egg from attaching to the lining of the uterus, thus impeding pregnancy.

However, according to the Archbishop of Mexico City, Cardinal Norberto Ribera, the contraceptive is a method for ''murdering innocents.''

Catholic Church officials have been ''invited to review the scientific evidence and engage in dialogue based on scientific foundations rather than speculation,'' Patricia Uribe, director of the Secretariat of Health's National Centre for Equity in Gender and Reproductive Health, told IPS.

Uribe believes the Church confused the morning-after pill with the RU-486 pill, which can be taken up to 12 weeks after conception and is designed to end a pregnancy.

The morning-after pill must be taken within 72 hours of intercourse, and ''prevents, rather than interrupts,'' a pregnancy, explained Uribe.

The Secretariat of Health's new guidelines recommend the morning-after pill as emergency contraception in cases involving rape or when another method, like condoms, has apparently failed.

Although Mexico has the second-largest number of Catholics in the world, after Brazil, the Church's opposition to the use of birth control seems to have had little effect.

The Church only accepts abstention during ovulation -- the ''rhythm method'' -- as a form of family planning.

Studies show that more than 77 percent of Mexican women -- 92 percent of whom are Roman Catholic -- use contraceptives, and nearly 20 percent have had an abortion.

Of the 2,328 self-declared Catholics surveyed last year by a local pollster, the Applied Statistics firm, in 17 of Mexico's 32 states, 80 percent said they disagreed with the Church's birth control doctrine.

In addition, 85 percent of the respondents said the Church should permit the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, and 91 percent said adults should have access to the entire spectrum of birth control methods.

With regards to the morning-after pill, 88 percent of those interviewed said rape victims should have immediate access to the emergency contraceptive.

''Conception is the implantation of the fertilised egg in the uterus, approximately 14 days after fertilisation, which means the morning-after pill is not an abortive method, because it acts before conception occurs,'' explains a report by the Unit of Experimental Medicine in the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Medical Faculty.

The morning-after pill has the same hormones as birth control pills, but in higher dosages, and what it does is prevent the egg from being released; from being fertilised if it has already been released; or from attaching to the lining of the womb if it has already been fertilised, according to the report.

The government distributes condoms and other forms of birth control in its family planning campaigns, despite the opposition of the Catholic Church.

That strategy has not been modified even though conservative President Vicente Fox, in office since December 2000, is a staunch Catholic.

The country's health authorities argue that the more than 300,000 illegal abortions practiced every year in this country of 100 million people and the more than 1,500 deaths arising from back alley abortions, as well as the need for family planning policies to keep the population from growing out of bounds are sufficient reasons for maintaining their reproductive health policies.