GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: Zika virus reignites campaign for abortion in Brazil

Zika virus reignites campaign for abortion in Brazil

Activists use Zika epidemic to press for abortion in Brazil

by Xavier Symons | 30 Jan 2016

A woman in Brazil holds her daughter, who was born with microcephaly / New York Times

The abortion debate has been reignited in Brazil amid fears about severe birth defects linked to the Zika virus. Zika is thought to cause defects such as microcephaly in the babies of pregnant women, though the link is yet to be scientifically proven.

A group of Brazilian academics and activists has created a petition to ask the country's supreme court to allow abortions for women who have contracted the virus.

The group, based around the Anis Institute of Bioethics Human Rights and Gender at Brazilia University, successfully campaigned in 2012 for the adding of a third exception to Brazil’s ban on abortion. Now in addition to medical emergencies and cases of rape, women can legally seek an abortion if their child is suffering from the brain condition known as anencephaly.

The group is confident that they can secure yet another exception for Zika sufferers. Deborah Diniz, a legal academic at Brazilia University signatory of the petition, blamed the government for the outbreak of the Zika virus, and said that the poor should not be penalised for policy blunders: “The state’s neglect generates a state responsibility” Diniz told the BBC.

The virus is spreading rapidly across the Americas, and on Thursday the WHO forecast that as many as 4 million people in the region may become infected before the epidemic is controlled.

The US Department of Health and Human Services has ruled that that transgender people are entitled to sex-change surgery provided under Medicare Advantage insurers. An Air Force veteran, Charlene Lauderdale, sought coverage for her transitioning surgery in November 2014 but it was denied because it was not the proper treatment for her, as she had been hospitalised four times for psychiatric problems.

The background to this decision is instructive. For many years, Medicare refused to cover transgender surgery. But in May 2014 a HHS Appeals Board ruled that this exclusion was based on outdated, incomplete, and biased science and medicine.

It turns out that the board reached its decision in a rather unusual way. In 1981 Medicare described sex reassignment surgery as “controversial” and “experimental” and said that it should not be covered. When this was appealed in 2013, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) declined to defend the old determination. The only evidence presented to the appeals board was submitted by advocacy groups supporting the “aggrieved party”. The CMS presented not one sentence of evidence.

Our legal system is adversarial and its integrity depends on an honest clash between opposing points of view. Why did the CMS throw in the towel? Did it really believe that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever which might question the benefits of transgender surgery? It certainly exists.

In fact, a 2014 review about research into suicide and transgender population found “an unparalleled level of suicidal behavior among transgender adults”. This was compiled by the Williams Institute, at the UCLA School of Law, an LGBT think tank, and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Their conclusions are also quite sobering: “The prevalence of suicide attempts among respondents to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality, is 41 percent, which vastly exceeds the 4.6 percent of the overall U.S. population who report a lifetime suicide attempt, and is also higher than the 10-20 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults who report ever attempting suicide.”

Bioethics must always be based on evidence. Ignoring contrary evidence, as the HHS seems to have done, not only corrupts the legal process, it could do immense harm to vulnerable people.