Author: Douwe Verkuyl
Position: gynaecologist
Institution: Bethesda Hospital, Hoogeveen, The Netherlands
E-mail: verkuyl@freeler.nl
Submitted Date: October 23, 2007
Published Date: October 24, 2007
This comment was originally posted as a “Reader Response” on the publication date indicated above. All Reader Responses are now available as comments.

If the Pope would declare that the RC church made a mistake in banning contraceptives. This would make a large difference in the lives of women in especially the Philippines, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Lives will also be saved because there is a clear inverse relationship between the availability of contraceptives and the number of (dangerous) abortions.

Dedicated health workers in thousands of RCC church affiliated health institutions could expand their dedication to providing reproductive services. There would be less poverty in the end. There would be less violence in the world, because there is a clear relationship between the number of unemployed young men and the chance of (civil) war. A similar declaration from the highest Islamic authorities in Cairo would also help.