Zika, Women's Health and WHRDs
Last month, Pope Francis fielded “hot button” questions during a press conference aboard the papal jet. After discussing Italy’s civil union proposal, Mexico’s disappearance epidemic, the Church’s own pedophilia scandal, the pope responded to a question about abortion in communities plagued by the Zika virus.
His Holiness made waves with an ambiguous admission: “avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil….in certain circumstances.”
Pope Francis’ response ignited a debate amongst policy makers, reproductive health advocates, and Catholics around the world about whether the pope was opening the door for the use of contraception in the face of the Zika global health emergency.
The ambiguous nature of the pope’s response poses a large problem for Catholic councils in Zika-affected countries, which are now tasked with interpreting the statements. Yet, even if his comments had been a clear green light for contraception, they must not be confused with a move towards greater respect for women’s reproductive rights - quite the opposite,
The pope's remarks are the latest installment in a clear global trend to place the responsibility (re: blame) for deadly health epidemics squarely on women.
In El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador and Brazil, government officials responded to the Zika outbreak by calling on women to “avoid getting pregnant,” ignoring the reality that most women in these countries have severely limited access to sexual and reproductive health services and education.
The United Nations Population Fund reported in 2014 that 22 percent of women across Latin America and the Caribbean want to delay or prevent pregnancy but do not have access to birth control; that percentage nearly doubles to 42 percent in Honduras alone. According to a recent analysis from the Global Fund for Women, “most women and girls [in Latin America] are not educated about contraception or family planning due to strong conservative rhetoric” and “high levels of misinformation” about sexual health.
The Pope’s recent remarks and those of governments urging women not to get pregnant follow in the footsteps of many reproductive decrees before them: they saddle women with the responsibility for procreating (or not), but provide those same women with none of the resources, legal agency, or social mobility to make and enact that decision.
In Colombia, which has the second-highest Zika infection rate after Brazil, there are 560 known cases of pregnant women infected with the virus. Colombia's health minister, Alejandro Gaviria, instructed women to delay pregnancies for six to eight months. Gaviria explained: "We are doing this because I believe it's a good way to communicate the risk, to tell people that there could be serious consequences.”
Yet, despite the minister’s hope that “people” will better understand the “consequences” and “risk” of disease, his call to postpone pregnancy was directed at women alone.
As with numerous health crisis before it, in the Zika discourse women(‘s bodies) are situated at the center of the debate. Women are simultaneously assumed to have enough agency to be linked to blame for the spread of the disease, but not so much agency as to have deserved a choice in the absence of a global health emergency.
As reproductive rights experts Susana T. Fried and Alice Welbourn wrote for openDemocracy last month, the responses of public officials and government policies to Zika reveal “persistent and often toxic gender stereotypes.”
In some cases, women are held responsible for preventing transmission. In other cases, women are expected to manage the crisis in the face of failed health systems. And if the crisis has anything to do with children, pregnancy or sex, women are held responsible for managing it.
The naïve assumption that “calling” on women to delay pregnancies somehow affords them the necessary agency to heed this call is dangerous, if expected. It flies in the face of what human rights defenders fighting for reproductive rights in Zika-affected countries have been saying for decades: access to services and education is paramount.
The lack of sexual health education in the Americas means that many women who would have otherwise practiced safe sex are left facing abortion as a last resort. But in many countries in the region, seeking an abortion can mean life-threatening danger, criminal charges, or severe stigmatisation.
In Colombia – one of the few nations in Latin America with laws providing for legal abortion in a small set of circumstances – women continue to face many barriers to accessing reproductive rights legally.
While health officials report that more than 25,000 Colombians have contracted the virus, among them at least 3,000 pregnant women, only one of these women has been allowed to legally abort her fetus at 32 weeks. This was the first known case of a Zika-related legal abortion in the country.
Religious leaders responded by demonizing the woman in local media, and claiming the “pro-abortion lobby” was “taking advantage” of the crisis. According to the Washington Post, Danelia Cardona, a psychiatrist and director of the Episcopal Conference of Colombia’s Department for the Promotion and Defense of Life, said it was wrong to change laws about “something as serious and delicate as human life” – dismissing the possibility that reproductive rights advocates fighting for policy change, or women seeking abortions, had thought seriously about the matter.
Silvia Plana is a reproductive rights defender in Colombia, and coordinator of the abortion rights legal aid group Bureau for the Life and Health of Women. In an interview with Semana magazine, she said:
“Women should be clear that they can decide on their sexual and reproductive rights. (...) Having a fetus with microcephaly has complications, and the woman must decide whether she wants to or not. Life matters as much as the mental and economic health of women.”
Silvia's fight for reproductive justice in Colombia includes not only the struggle to expand legal access to abortion beyond incidents of rape and severe health complications, but also to transform the extreme stigmatisation of women who seek abortions.
Further north, Morena Herrera is a sexual and reproductive rights campaigner in El Salvador, a country with one of the toughest anti-abortion laws in the world.
In Herrera’s country, women are never allowed to have an abortion - not even in cases of rape, when their life is in danger or when the foetus is severely deformed. Those who suffer miscarriages or stillbirths risk being accused of intentionally inducing an abortion and can be charged with aggravated murder, facing up to 50 years in jail.
Herrera leads the Citizen’s Group for the Decriminalization of Abortion, a collective organisation fighting for reproductive rights. She helps women who have been denied a fair trial, and was recently one of the lead campaigners who successfully secured the release of a woman serving a 30-year sentence for “aggravated murder” after she suffered a miscarriage.
Because of her work, Herrera and her organisation have received direct threats, harassment, and been featured in public campaigns labeling them “liars” and “murderers.”
“People say we are committing a crime by raising awareness, supporting women and advocating on their behalf and we respond by saying we are fighting to change an unfair law. That can’t be illegal. We don’t accept that.” - WHRD Morena Herrera, El Salvador
El Salvador's laws are among the strictest in the world in denying women's reproductive rights. The same authorities that maintain these laws – and condone attacks against HRDs who protest against them – are now calling on women to delay pregnancy. Sexual health education did not accompany the call. Nor is contraception any more widely available. And reproductive rights defenders like Morena Herrera are still demonized in national media.
The day after the call to delay pregnancies, women in El Salvador and across the region were no more able to exercise their right to bodily integrity than they were they day before. All that changed was an increase in the rhetoric that places women at the blameworthy center of public health debates.
Reproductive rights defenders like Morena Herrera are fighting to change social, legal, and religious frameworks that prevent access to health care. They are demanding access to education such that women can make an informed decision. And they are struggling to expand access to resources and infrastructure that enable women to safely enact the decisions they make. They began their work long before the Zika crisis, and with support and protection they will continue long after.
These human rights defenders are leading the way to a higher standard of public health and human rights in the Americas. If you are going to listen, listen to them.
