As the Zika virus continues to spread, in what is now an official public health emergency causing severe neurological birth defects across multiple countries, some governments are calling on women to delay pregnancy – even though birth control is hard to access and abortion is illegal in the given region.

The United Nations this week called access to abortion a human right. In the face of a virus like Zika, activists and political leaders alike need to call on countries with restrictive abortion laws to help women. The alternative – limiting women’s rights at the risk of unsafe abortions – is simply too disastrous.



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Colombia has advised women not to get pregnant for the next six to eight months, and El Salvador called on women to wait two years before getting pregnant; both countries have seen increased cases of Zika and of microcephaly in babies that is believed to be caused by the virus.

But both countries also have strict laws on abortion, and El Salvador has a low rate of contraceptive use, making it all the more difficult for women to avoid pregnancy.

The concern from international women’s health organizations is not only that women lack reproductive care options, but that the lack of options could lead to an increase of illegal and unsafe abortions. As it stands, 95% of abortions that happen in Latin America, where laws restricting the procedure are quite strict, are performed in unsafe conditions.

“Unsafe abortion is the number one maternal mortality cause in the region,” Paula Ávila-Guillen, programs specialist at the Center for Reproductive Rights and an expert on reproductive policy in Latin America, tells me. “When women decide to terminate their pregnancies, they are going to do so – it’s just a matter of how.”

And though Colombia law allows for abortion in cases of life-threatening fetal abnormalities, unsafe and illegal abortions are common. Another huge problem, Ávila-Guillen says, is that Zika is most prevalent in rural areas where mosquitoes tend to congregate while abortion services in Colombia are mostly limited to cities.

“In tropical areas where women are poorer and resources are limited, there may not be a hospital to provide an abortion,” she says.

In El Salvador – where abortion is illegal under all circumstances and women are thrown in jail if they can’t prove their miscarriage or stillbirth is the result of natural causes – the landscape is even bleaker. Ávila-Guillen tells me that those working to make abortion legal in the country have to be incredibly careful, because “if you talk too much about abortion, you can be prosecuted”. A law punishes those seen as instigating or pushing abortion.

While organizations like the Center for Reproductive Rights are working with partners on the ground in Latin America, other activists are taking matters into their own hands. One Dutch nonprofit, WomenOnWeb, for example, is offering free online medical consultations to women impacted by the virus. Director Rebecca Gomperts says the organization will send women packets of pills to induce abortion, also free of charge.

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But, as Ávila-Guillen rightly points out, the responsibility for caring for women potentially affected by Zika lies with governments – they’re the ones that need to ensure people have a full range of reproductive care. Governments also hold the responsibility to ensure that health warnings aren’t limited to women but given to men as well, calling on them to use condoms instead of simply insisting women not get pregnant.

The recommendations as they stand are not just unrealistic, they’re dangerous. Because if there’s one thing that public health experts know, it’s this: women who don’t want to be pregnant will find some way not to be, including illegal and unsafe abortions.