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When public health runs into the politics of reproduction.
The Zika virus sometimes cause microcephaly -- doctors are unable to determine if the unborn has microcephaly until about 20 weeks gestation making it illegal for women to seek an abortion that birth defect in states that ban abortions at 20 weeks.
From the following article:
The Zika Problem: Public Health Runs Smack Into Politics of Reproduction | US News Opinion
The Zika virus sometimes cause microcephaly -- doctors are unable to determine if the unborn has microcephaly until about 20 weeks gestation making it illegal for women to seek an abortion that birth defect in states that ban abortions at 20 weeks.
From the following article:
This is where public health runs smack into the politics of reproduction. The CDC advises pregnant women with the virus to seek a medical diagnosis for microcephaly and have it confirmed after their baby is born. But some women may wonder whether they want to continue their pregnancies at all under these circumstances.
Here, three facts stand out. First, not all Zika-infected women transmit the virus to their fetuses. Second, if the virus is transmitted, common results are serious birth defects – hearing and vision impairment, seizures, intellectual and physical disability – for which there is no cure. Third, at present doctors are unable to confirm microcephaly until around the 20th week of pregnancy. On these facts, decisions about what course to follow may well be complicated, though at least women in the U.S. have a choice. Unlike most of Central and South America where abortion remains a crime, women in the U.S. have a constitutional right to decide whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.
Yet in a number of U.S. states, exercising that right has been made increasingly difficult. In attempts to create abortion-free zones, states have been hacking away at the abortion right any way they can. The general strategy is to make abortion harder to get – harder legally, financially, emotionally and practically. Common tactics include waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds and burdensome requirements on clinics and providers. Last week the Supreme Court struck down two such provisions in Texas on the ground that neither advanced the health of pregnant women. But among the Texas regulations still in effect is a total ban on abortion after 20 weeks. Recall that microcephaly cannot be definitively diagnosed until after 20 weeks. This means pregnant women may be timed out of legal abortion in Texas, and may not have the resources to go elsewhere.
Timing isn't the only legal problem. Indiana and North Dakota ban abortions sought on the basis of fetal disability, claiming that such abortions are a form of discrimination. Babies born with microcephaly will certainly be disabled: Their heads are small because the brain has not grown as it should have. This is why their health is compromised. If a pregnant woman in North Dakota discloses her Zika-based reason, the abortion will be prohibited and doctors who go ahead out of compassion, conscience or professional judgment are subject to jail time and fines.
...
The age of Zika is not the time – it is never the time – to play politics with women's health or their rights. As things stand now, Congress refuses to help women avoid pregnancy, while some states are hell-bent on burdening access to abortion for women whose pregnancies are unwanted. In the coming months, more and more Zika-infected women will become pregnant. Some will decide to keep their pregnancies and care for their microcephalic infants into childhood and beyond. Others may make a different choice, law permitting. Right now the law in several states does not permit, but seems content to force unwanted motherhood on what may be a large class of women subject to a new environmental threat.
The Zika Problem: Public Health Runs Smack Into Politics of Reproduction | US News Opinion
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