The danger is that you might have a disabled child.

John Allen strains mightily to argue that Zikaquiddick is the same as the (rumored and unproven) birth control for rape permission and Pope Benedict's condom for AIDS comment.

Here's what he says:

In both cases, the moral analysis shifts because birth control is being used not to block the transmission of life, but to prevent the infliction of a harm — either unwanted pregnancy as the result of violence, or infection by a deadly disease.

Except, of course, that the Zika permission involves neither, and Lombardi's confirmation states no such conditions.

Here, the envisioned danger is that one may conceive a microencephalic child. The use of condoms and other contraceptives in this scenario is entirely intended to prevent conception.

Zika is not--not even remotely--a "deadly disease." Not one death has been attributed to it since its discovery in 1954. It sounds unpleasant, and I would not care to contract it: there's a rash, fever and body pains. But it is not *deadly*.

The fear is that there might be a link to microencephaly in in utero infants. That's it.

So what contraception does here is what it is intended to do: avoid the conception and birth of such infants, hypothetical as the linkage may be. It is the intended effect of the Pope's permission.

This isn't some development of doctrine--it is the flat contradiction of it. And from it, much follows. You have a genetic history of X? Here are your Trojans. Contra Buck v. Bell, one generation of your condition is enough, thank you very much.