How Many Babies Have You Had, Father Pavone?

From CNN regarding the Zika crisis:

In December, authorities in Brazil urged women not to get pregnant. Then last month came the warning from Colombia to delay pregnancy until July. Then in an interview, a health official in El Salvador recommended that women “try to avoid getting pregnant this year and the next.”

Does this mean couples in these largely Catholic countries should abstain from sex for two years? Or should they use so-called “natural family planning”? The method, which involves a woman monitoring her basal body temperature and vaginal secretions to avoid having sex at fertile times of the month, has a 25% failure rate, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Or, because of Zika, should couples use more effective methods of birth control?

So far, the church hierarchy has remained silent on these questions.

The Catholic catechism states that besides “natural family planning,” anything else that works to “‘render procreation impossible’ is intrinsically evil.”

The Rev. Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said that means birth control is wrong no matter what. “That prohibition doesn’t change based on circumstances,” he said. “So couples have a responsibility to live according to the church’s teachings in whatever circumstances they find themselves.”