Is the call for Zika virus abortions the new eugenics?
When the World Health Organization declared the Zika virus a global emergency, it also claimed that the disease was tied to increased cases of microcephaly in babies. A day later, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, which actively promotes the view that “access to abortion is a matter of human rights,” was putting pressure on countries in Central and South America to change laws that protect prenatal children from violence.
Other abortion rights activists seized on this new moment of opportunism. The blog ThinkProgress described it as “The Zika Virus' Unlikely Silver Lining.” Slate's feminist XXFactor blog sounded hopeful that Zika would be Latin America's “rubella moment” — recalling that, in the 1950s, rubella's association with birth defects began to make otherwise illegal abortion palatable in America.… Seguir leyendo »