Abortion Demand Skyrockets as Women in Nations Hit by Zika Virus Abort Their Disabled Babies

International   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Jun 23, 2016   |   9:53AM   |   Washington, DC

A Dutch group that sends dangerous abortion drugs to women in pro-life countries says the demand has skyrocketed since the Zika virus became a world health problem.

The group, Women on Web, co-authored a study linking the increased demand to the Zika virus, and had it published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, according to the New York Times.

The Zika virus has become a major problem in Central and South America, partly because of a link between the virus and birth defects in newborns. Several countries have seen an alarming uptick in the number of babies born with microcephaly, a brain disorder that is not typically fatal but can cause health problems throughout the child’s life.

Abortion advocates have been using the link between the virus and birth defects as an excuse to push for more abortions on babies with disabilities. In South and Central America, where abortion is widely prohibited, they also have been using the health crisis to push for legalized abortion.

Women on Web has been one of the leading groups targeting Latin American women and babies for abortions by selling them dangerous abortion drugs. In the new study, the pro-abortion group said it has seen huge increases in the number of women in Latin American requesting the abortion drugs.

According to the BBC, the abortion group received nearly twice as many orders from women in Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela and Honduras; and orders from Columbia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Honduras went up by more than one-third. In total, the group sent more than 2,300 abortion drug packages to women in countries with Zika from Nov. 17, 2015, to March 2 of this year, according to the study. The researchers said they picked Nov. 17 because it was the date when the Pan American Health Organization announced that Zika may be linked to birth defects.

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Women on Web told the New York Times that desperate women have been emailing them from countries where abortion is illegal, asking for the abortion drugs. One Colombian woman emailed: “Here Zika is a major problem and the health authorities do not help with it. … I have no resources at this time and want to ask for your help because fear overwhelms me. What if the baby is born sick?!”

“Some of the emails that came in were heartbreaking,” said Dr. Abigail R.A. Aiken, lead author of the study and researcher at the University of Texas, Austin. “The fear and desperation was really hard to read.”

However, a closer look at the situation reveals a much more troubling situation on the part of the pro-abortion group. Women on Web appears to be preying on the fears of desperate women and selling them a dangerous product with virtually no medical advice or supervision.

Women on Web recommends the abortion drugs be used up to nine or ten weeks of pregnancy, but it fails to mention that there is very little way of knowing at that point if the unborn baby or the mother really are infected with Zika.

The virus is difficult to diagnose because symptoms can look like other illnesses. Similarly, conditions like microcephaly often are not diagnosed until women are 20 weeks pregnant or later. Women who take the abortion drugs could very likely be aborting healthy unborn babies and putting their own lives at risk. Not all unborn babies whose mothers have Zika are born with birth defects. It also should be noted that no matter whether an unborn baby is healthy or sick, the baby deserves a right to life.

Another problem is with the drug itself. Chemical abortions can be deadly to the woman as well as her unborn child. Without a doctor’s visit or medical supervision (neither of which Women on Waves appears to be providing with the mail-order abortion drugs), more lives could be in jeopardy. Although Women on Waves says the abortion pill is safe, evidence from the United States indicates that’s not the case. In America, where emergency medical care often is readily available, the Food and Drug Administration documented at least 14 women’s deaths and 2,207 injuries from abortion drugs in the past 12 years, LifeNews previously reported.

And though the group says it offers the deadly drug to women who are fewer than nine weeks pregnant, it seems highly unlikely that it is being used only in this short time-span. Due to the shipping time (one to five weeks) plus the fact that women often do not know they are pregnant until several weeks into the pregnancy, women could be taking the drug much later in their pregnancies. The FDA recommends the chemical abortion drug RU-486 be taken only up to the first ten weeks of pregnancy.

In February, LifeNews reported that some pro-life countries have been confiscating the dangerous abortion drugs when they find them in the mail.

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