The Evil Chemicals

The Vatican has decided that the birth control pill is destroying the environment. "We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations. That's right, guys, your infertility problems (wait, what?) are caused by girls peeing.

This is ridiculous, and yet frightening. It's been picked up (on the internet, which knows all) as a real news story. People might even believe it (though I have my doubts that Mr. Castellvi is one of them). It only takes a few dedicated nutballs to ruin medical science for everyone -- witness the anti-vaccination scam, or the fluoridation freaks. Safe, reliable, widely-available birth control is essential to a civilized society. In this case, environmentalism is just another cover for Catholic misogyny.

Keep in mind that, outside the developed world, the death rate from pregnancy is somewhere around 1 in 6. Even in the United States, a woman is more likely to survive a car accident than a pregnancy, according to the WHO. Make no mistake: the Vatican and its supporters want women to risk death and disability (not to mention a joyless, sexless life) in order to appease their god, whom, they say, has decreed that pregnancy is "the intimate truth of conjugal love."

Given his alleged track record, I'm not surprised that their god has confused "death" and "love."