ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis has suggested that women threatened with the Zika virus could use artificial contraception, saying there’s a clear moral difference between aborting a fetus and preventing a pregnancy.

Francis was asked Wednesday en route home from Mexico if abortion or birth control could be considered a “lesser evil,” when confronting the Zika crisis in Brazil, where some babies have been born with abnormally small heads to Zika-infected mothers. MORE