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Zika: Brazilian Archdiocese says 'nothing justifies abortion' amid calls for laws to be relaxed
Zika has been linked to brain damage in babies
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Your support makes all the difference.As the Zika virus linked to brain damage in babies spreads across Brazil, the debate on the country’s strict abortion laws has been reignited.
Over 4,000 cases of microcephaly – which is believed to be caused by Zika, have been reported in babies in Brazil since late 2015.
Health officials have urged pregnant women and those trying to have a child to protect themselves from mosquito bites in order to avoid their children being affected by microcephaly. Governments including El Salvador, Colombia and Ecuador have advised women against becoming pregnant until 2018.
However in devoutly Catholic Central and South American nations where birth control is hard to acquire and abortion is illegal or extremely restricted, women are concerned about how they can realistically protect themselves and their unborn children without abstaining for sex for years.
The Vatican has not yet issued a statement on the situation, despite Zika spreading through Catholic countries.
However, local religious figures have adressed calls to make abortion illegal.
Researchers, activists and lawyers who previously won a Supreme Court ruling to allow abortion procedure in cases of the anencephaly birth defect are now launching a similar case for microcephaly.
Reverend Luciano Brito, a spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife, said “Nothing justifies an abortion,” the New York Times reported.
“Just because a foetus has microcephaly won’t make us favourable [to changing the law],” he said.
Reverend Father Frank Pavone, national director of US-based anti-abortion group Priests for Life, said Catholics should not use birth control despite the threat of Zika.
“That prohibition doesn't change based on circumstances,” he told CNN.
“So couples have a responsibility to live according to the church's teachings in whatever circumstances they find themselves.”
However, Reverend James Bretzke, a professor of theology at Boston College, said: “The polemical approach, that contraception is devious or demonic in origin or the smoke of Satan, may ultimately not be the best pastoral approach.
“In Catholic Church teaching, some would say it would be acceptable to try to prevent conception in cases like this.”
The Vatican told the BBC it did not yet have a comment on the situation.
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