Zika Virus Crisis: "I Have Microcephaly. We Need Treatment, Not Abortion," Says Fantastically Gifted Journalist

Steve Weatherbe : Feb 9, 2016
LifeSiteNews

Find out how to sign a petition to telling the UN to stop using the Zika virus as a pretext to push abortion on Latin America.

(Brazil)—When a young Brazilian journalist named Ana Carolina Caceres saw a BBC Brazil story about a pro-abortion group using the Zika-virus/microcephaly scare to overturn the country's restrictive abortion law, she also saw red. (Photo: Ana Carolina Caceres/via BBC News)

Caceres has microcephaly herself and knows that having an abnormally small skull does not mean having a small brain. In fact, she became a journalist to speak up for others with microcephaly. So she wrote her own story for the BBC condemning the abortion push.

"I survived, as do many others with microcephaly," she wrote. "Our mothers did not abort. That is why we exist." She does more than exist: she graduated from university, wrote a book about her life, plays the violin and maintains a blog to encourage other microcephalics and their families.

But on the day she was born, she reported, "the doctor said I had no chance of survival; 'She will not walk, she will not talk and, over time, she will enter a vegetative state until she dies,'" he said. "But he—like many others—was wrong."

Still, it was a battle, and costly one. "The whole family got together—uncles, aunts and others. Everyone gave what they could to cover the costs," she said. Within nine days of her birth she had survived five operations to allow her to breathe on her own.

"I also had seizures. Apparently it's something that all people suffering from microcephaly will have. But it's not a big deal—there are drugs to keep it under control," she told the BBC. (Photo: Ana Carolina Caceres/via BBC News)

Caceres was responding to the announcement by Anis, a bioethics institute, that it will challenge the country's abortion law in court on the grounds that the recent increase in cases of microcephaly is caused by the mosquito-spread Zika virus, which the government ought to have prevented, Anis claims.

According to Anis's Debora Diniz, women pregnant with microcephalic children are "being "penalized for the failings of public policy," and therefore "should have the right to choose the legal abortion." "After all," she added, "we know that the typical microcephaly is an incurable, irreversible harm."

Cacares agrees that her condition "can certainly have more serious consequences than the ones I experienced" and adds that many children with the condition "will be lucky to have a life like mine."

Nonetheless, "abortion," she told BBC Brazil, "is a short-sighted attempt to tackle the problem. The most important thing is access to treatment, counseling for parents and older sufferers, and physiotherapy and neurological treatment for those born with microcephaly." But like Anis, Caceres blames government incompetence for at least part of the problem, misspending funds on public works that don't benefit most people, while neglecting the health system.

She is afraid the government will expand abortion for microcephaly as a quick solution rather than providing the necessary care and education after...

Click here to read more and sign a petition telling the UN to stop using the Zika Virus Scare as a pretext to push abortion.