Zika Virus Raises Questions Regarding Women’s Reproductive Rights

RH Reality Check: The Zika Virus Is a Matter of Reproductive Injustice
Beatriz Galli, senior Latin America policy adviser for Ipas and member of the Bioethics Commission of the Lawyers Bar Association in Rio de Janeiro, discusses the Zika outbreak’s impact on women’s health, especially as it pertains to access to safe abortions. Galli writes, “The discussion around the Zika outbreak and recommendations for women is really a matter of reproductive justice and gender equality. … Unsafe abortion rates are likely to rise during the Zika outbreak in Brazil, and this reality cannot be ignored when governments and U.N. agencies meet to discuss urgent measures needed to face this global health crisis…” (2/3).

Humanosphere: Zika: Women told to delay pregnancy, but lack reproductive rights to heed call
Humanosphere journalist Lisa Nikolau discusses the implications of the Salvadoran government’s recommendation in response to the Zika outbreak urging women to not get pregnant until 2018. Nikolau writes, “It raises the question of whether pregnant women who hear of the potential fetal abnormalities [associated with the Zika virus] will seek abortions, which in El Salvador are criminalized and can lead to decades in jail” (2/4).

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