For several weeks, public policy experts have sounded a warning as Zika has spread in the state of Florida. Last week, NPR highlighted how Planned Parenthood has answered the call, joining other groups to knock on thousands of doors and warn people of the dangers associated with the virus, all while promoting its anti-life agenda.
Like many other groups that back abortion, Planned Parenthood says a large part of reducing Zika’s harm is the use of contraceptives to stop women from getting pregnant and passing various disorders onto their children, with abortion as a backup plan. “This is a natural extension of the work we do with reproductive health care and sexually-transmitted infections,” Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida Dr. Christopher Estes told NPR. “It just made sense. And this is a time of a public health crisis. When you have something like this going on, it’s, ‘All hands on deck.’”
Pro-life groups, however, told The Stream that Planned Parenthood’s approach to Zika prevention is causing more harm than good.
“The biggest problem is that an accurate estimate of” how Zika will affect unborn children “not available,” said Dr. Donna Harrison, Executive Director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “No one can tell a pregnant mom infected with Zika how likely it is that her child will have any of these things.”
“These things” are a number of disorders associated with a pregnant mother’s Zika virus infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Zika virus infection during pregnancy is a cause of microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies; however, the clinical spectrum of the effects of Zika virus infection during pregnancy is not yet known. A wide range of neurologic abnormalities, in addition to microcephaly, has been observed among infants with presumed or confirmed congenital Zika virus infection.”
Microcephaly, which can cause small heads and varying levels of brain disorders, has received the most amount of attention. Harrison, though, says “The absolute risk of problems to fetuses whose mother is infected during pregnancy is still being evaluated by the CDC.” She pointed out that maternal infections in the first trimester are by far most likely to affect a child, but that “the best studies show that of all woman infected during the first trimester, 98-99 percent of those infants will not have microcephaly.
“We have a lot of fear,” concluded Harrison, “and very little information at the moment. And fear breeds abortion.”
Jor-El Godsey, president of the pro-life pregnancy care center umbrella group Heartbeat International, said that “What we need to focus on in times like these are cures, treatments and preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Abortion promises none of these societal goods, but instead, promises to end the life of a person who is already alive. That is simply the opposite of health care.”
“The vast majority of women who abort their children do so not because they think it’s the best choice, but because they feel it’s their only choice,” continued Godsey in an e-mail to The Stream. “Women deserve to know the whole truth. A pregnant mother needs to know that Zika and microcephaly are not death sentences for themselves or their precious children.”
“Every life has value and is worth living, regardless of circumstance or the challenges we are called to overcome,” he explained.
According to NPR, Planned Parenthood is not relying solely on birth control and abortion, though it describes that “Family planning is a key part of the Planned Parenthood message.”
“The organization is also distributing Zika prevention kits, including condoms and mosquito repellent, to pregnant women at its health centers,” reports NPR.
Despite the message of the abortion industry, one Florida mother is speaking up to describe the joy she has because of her two children with microcephaly. “[I]t’s not the end of the world because you have these kids,” Haneefa De Clercq, told ABC25. “They will teach [mothers] so much. They’ll teach them how to love, they will teach them patience.”
De Clercq’s disabled children are Andrea, 37, and Robbie, 33, with the respective maturation of a three-year-old and a seven-year-old. “I never expected that I could give them an instruction and that they would follow that instruction and do it properly,” she said. “I see the love between them and it gives me tears of joy.” (For more from the author of “Pro-Lifers Respond to Planned Parenthood’s Florida Zika Push” please click HERE)
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