to hear my dad tell it, back in the day (say, 25 years ago), a country would get a good family planning program going, only to have it derailed by a visit from pope jp2.

ffwd to today: on the heels of pope rat’s visit to brasil, lula launches a program to provide heavily subsidized birth control pills through ten thousand pharmacies nationwide.

sounds like they’ve stopped buying what the vatican’s selling.

in other news, an ottawa appeals court decided that a five-year-old boy has three legal parents: the lesbian couple who made the decision to have a child, and the friend who agreed to father the child. it was the legal status of the biological mother’s partner that was in question.