ROME (LifeSiteNews) – The Vatican’s official newspaper has caused a media storm in the European press with an article asserting the abortifacient and carcinogenic effects of hormonal contraceptives.

The Italian edition of L’Osservatore Romano carries an article this week on a report by the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC) that was created to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, the document by Pope Paul VI that reiterated the Catholic Church’s teaching on artificial birth control.

Pedro José María Simón Castellví, the president of FIAMC, wrote that “the means of contraception violate at least five important rights: the right to life, the right to health, the right to education, all right to information (their spread is at the expense of information on natural resources) and the right to equality between the sexes (the burden of contraception falls mostly on women).”

“Curiously”, Castelvi wrote, this information on the abortifacient effect of the Pill “does not reach the general public,” despite being well-known to researchers.

The hundred-page report, published in German, is an analysis of scientific data on the effects of the Pill and includes three hundred bibliographic citations, mostly from specialized medical journals.

The report “clearly demonstrates” that anovulant, low-dose hormonal birth control pills work not only by preventing ovulation but also by causing the death of an already existing child in the uterine wall. This embryonic person, Castellvi wrote, “even in its early days, is something other than an egg or female germ cell.” From the embryonic stage, the child grows in a coordinated way and this development, unless prevented, “ends with its exit from the womb in nine months, ready to devour a litre of milk.”

The report also notes that the International Agency for Research of Cancer, an agency of the World Health Organization, reported in July 2005 that the oral preparations of combined estrogen-progestogens common in birth control pills are classified in a group of carcinogenic agents.

“The sad thing in all this,” Castelvi wrote, “is that if it is to regulate fertility, these are not the products required. The natural means of regulating fertility, ‘NFP’ or Natural Family Planning, are equally effective and also respect the person.”