In an article published by the Vatican this week, the head of the world's Catholic doctors broadened the attack on the pill, claiming it had also brought "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tons of hormones" that had impaired male fertility.
Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction." He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."
He described families who had decided against reproduction as "wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it."
The fall in the birth rate, he said, was an "epidemic" far worse, but given less attention, than obesity. Young Austrians, he said, were committing national suicide if they failed to procreate. And if it were not possible to reverse the population decline they would have to understand the necessity of an "intelligent immigration policy."
Schonborn told Austrian TV that when he first read Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical condemning artificial contraception he viewed it negatively as a "cold shower." But he said he had altered his views as, over time, it had proved "prophetic."
Writing for the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, the president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, Dr. Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, said research from his association also showed the pill "worked in many cases with a genuinely ... abortive effect."
The Spanish doctor pointed to the Federation's recent document commemorating the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, which "irrefutably shows that the most widely used anti-ovulatory pill in the industrialized world, the one made with low doses of estrogen and progesterone, in many cases works with an anti-implantation effect; that is, abortifacient [effect], because it expels a small human embryo."
Castellvi also pointed out that "this anti-implantation effect is acknowledged in scientific literature, which shamelessly speaks of an embryo loss rate. Curiously, however, this information does not reach the public at large."
He also pointed to the "devastating ecological effects of the tons of hormones discarded into the environment each year. We have sufficient data to state that one of the causes of masculine infertility in the West is the environmental contamination caused by the products of the 'pill'." Castellvi noted as well that the International Agency for Research on Cancer reported in 2005 that the pill has carcinogenic effects.
After explaining that the "natural methods of regulating fertility [NFP] are the ones that are effective and that respect the nature of the person," Castellvi stated that "in celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man we can say that the contraceptive methods violate at least five important rights: the right to life, the right to health, the right to education, the right to information (its dissemination occurs to the detriment of information about natural methods) and the right of equality between the sexes (responsibility for contraceptive use almost always falls to the woman)."
“The opposite question,” he continued, “can help us see how prophetic Paul VI was. If he would have accepted the ‘pill,’ would we today be able to know of its anti-implantation effects?” Castellvi wrote.
“A doctor’s prestige lies in being able to authoritatively offer to couples alternatives to contraceptives. The relationship between doctor and patient is so strong that it can only be broken with great difficulty, even if between the two it seems to be like a dissident theologian. Therefore it is necessary that we teach and inform doctors more and better about fertility,” he said.