Brazil,Zika and Abortion

 

Women on Web temporarily suspends sending abortifacients to women in Brazil

By Dave Andrusko
The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the pro-abortion organization Women on Web has been almost completely unsuccessful in shipping chemical abortifacients to women in Brazil.
According to a highly sympathetic story written by Ann M. Simmons and Claire Rigby, Women on Web has temporarily shelved the program which promised women they would receive free misoprostol and mifepristone in the mail.
Simmons and Rigby write that the group says it has sent “dozens of packages” to women in Brazil but only two women received them. The packages which have been confiscated by Brazilian authorities.
The abortifacients were requested by women who thought they might have been exposed to the Zika virus which has been associated with, but not proven to cause microcephaly, a condition in which babies are born with undersized heads with subsequent health problems.
According to the Times’ story

Authorities acknowledge that they are confiscating abortion drugs sent in the mail because the medicines are banned in Brazil.

The Brazilian Health Surveillance Agency said it was illegal for individuals to receive misoprostol — an abortive substance best known in Brazil by the brand name Cytotec — in the mail.

“Packages are checked when they arrive at the post office, and if medications are discovered they are forwarded to us,” said Carlos Dias Lopes, an agency press officer.

Misoprostol and mifepristone have legitimate, non-abortifacient properties which is why The World Health Organization lists them on its Model List of Essential Medicines that “satisfy the priority healthcare needs of the population.”
However, as Simmons and Rigby note, there is an annotation

“where permitted under national law and where culturally acceptable.” It also notes that usage of these drugs requires “close medical supervision.”

As NRL News Today has reported previously, pro-abortion forces are engaged in an all-out campaign to change protective abortion laws in Latin America. For example, earlier this month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad AL Hussein said, “Laws and policies that restrict access to these [reproductive health] services must be urgently reviewed in line with human rights obligations in order to ensure the right to health for all in practice.”
But for the second time, a recent poll shows a majority of Brazilians oppose abortion for women infected with the Zika virus, according to Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, results of which were picked up by CNSNews.com.

58 percent of Brazilians said that pregnant women infected with the Zika virus should not be able to have an abortion, while 32 percent thought the woman should have the option of an abortion, and 10 percent said they had no opinion.

Source: NRLC News