Church says Mexico’s Fox traitor on day-after pill
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President Vicente Fox, the first devout Roman Catholic to lead Mexico in decades, has been labeled a traitor by the church after his government put “morning-after” contraceptive pills in public clinics this week.
A senior church official said Fox has ignored its concerns that the pill is tantamount to abortion, which is illegal in Mexico. The morning-after pill has been available at pharmacies in Mexico for several years and was added this week to a list of drugs required to be available at public health centers.
“It makes the church profoundly unhappy that some officials say they are Catholic and do things against their faith,” Hugo Valdemar Romero, a top church spokesman, said in the daily newspaper Reforma on Wednesday.
“We are sorry the president has not put the brakes on this kind of thing. The government is deaf to the church’s complaints,” he said.
A health ministry spokesman declined to respond to Valdemar Romero’s comments other than to say that the morning-after pill was a form of birth control, not abortion.
The morning-after pill, sometimes called emergency contraception, is taken within 72 hours of intercourse to prevent pregnancy. It contains hormones such as estrogen and progestin that stop a fertilized egg from becoming implanted in the uterus.
In Mexico, the world’s second-largest Catholic country, and in other countries, abortion opponents including Catholic leaders equate the use of morning-after pills with abortion.
Debate over its use has raged in the United States, where some pharmacists refuse to fill prescriptions for the drug. Some U.S. states have authorized its sale over the counter.
In Mexico, pharmaceutical drugs are commonly available without a prescription.
Fox famously broke a national political taboo when he kissed Pope John Paul’s ring in 2002.
Despite its huge Catholic population, Mexico has had a long tradition of coolness and even hostility between church and state stemming from decades of anti-clerical rule following the 1910 revolution.
Fox’s election victory in 2000 ended 71 years of single-party rule. He became the first Mexican leader to attend a papal mass and in April, a papal funeral with John Paul’s death.
Public clinics already offer other forms of birth control such as condoms, which the church also opposes. Last year, the health ministry endorsed the morning-after pill’s use for family planning in this nation of 106 million people, infuriating church officials.
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