![BATTLER: Wendy Stein has tirelessly campaigned for women’s rights in PNG. Picture: Simone De Peak
BATTLER: Wendy Stein has tirelessly campaigned for women’s rights in PNG. Picture: Simone De Peak](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/516c0df6-6eca-411e-924f-6700c94941c0.jpg/r0_0_4789_2969_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
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IN the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea, a long way from Rome, a Salamander Bay Rotarian and a Catholic bishop are fighting a battle over birth control.
But in the Vatican, there are signs its bigger war against contraceptives might be coming to an end.
It can't come a minute too soon for Rotarian Wendy Stein, of Taylors Beach.
In early September, Alotau-Sideia Bishop Rolando Santos, who made a name for himself last year when he called condoms "intrinsically evil" in response to a government AIDS-prevention campaign, lectured Ms Stein about her Papua New Guinea women's family planning project.
In the past two years, more than 18,000 women have received implants in their arms through the project, providing them with five years of contraceptive security.
Rotary Australia's World Community Service program credits Salamander Bay Rotary Club, where Ms Stein is international director, with the project.
![Wendy Stein and Papua New Guinea Bishop Rolando Santos. Wendy Stein and Papua New Guinea Bishop Rolando Santos.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-feed-data/18599249-7700-476d-a755-a5687aaec657.jpg/r0_0_610_435_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Papua New Guinea has one of the world's worst maternal mortality rates, with five women dying each day while giving birth. Nearly 75 in every 1000 children are dead before they reach the age of five.
But Philippines-born Bishop Santos rejected the implant project and said the government should not be supporting it. He has sent Catholic women to the area's health centres to claim the implants would make women sterile and are against Catholic teaching.
"He said the only family planning women should use was the ovulation method," Ms Stein said. "I said he was wrong."
When Pope Francis announced his historic synod on the family - which starts tomorrow - Catholics were asked questions including whether the Church's teaching against contraception was "accepted". In recent weeks, a leading reformist Cardinal close to the Pope has hinted at possible changes to the Church's blanket ban on contraception, in place since 1968, by saying it was "the responsibility of the parents" to decide how many children to have.
Ms Stein has worked as a Rotary volunteer in Papua New Guinea for the past eight years, where women and children in remote and rural areas suffer the consequences of no contraception.
"The women have so many children. In the villages, there's children having children, and children wandering naked that no one knows. If women say 'no' to their men, they're beaten, and they get pregnant again, and too many of them die in childbirth," Ms Stein said.
She was prompted into volunteering, with the support of her Salamander Bay Rotary Club, after being shocked by the plight of women and children during a visit to PNG in 2005.
She concentrated on a cluster of villages called Asaro Mando, in the eastern highlands outside Goroka, where about 7000 people live a subsistence farming lifestyle. Projects had included water supply and building a school, but family planning was the key to a better future for Papua New Guinea, Ms Stein said.
"The women vote with their feet. They come in canoes and trucks, they walk for hours, and I've seen them turn up on water buffalo. Only 26 per cent of women in Papua New Guinea have access to contraception. The bishop told me I wouldn't go to heaven if I kept doing what I'm doing. I told him it was time the fire and brimstone threats against women ended."