The Cardinal Newsman Society notes:
Two Georgetown University law professors posted an article on a University website this week calling on the World Health Organization (WHO) to recommend birth control and abortion as means of responding to the Zika virus outbreak in South America in order to “truly respect the dignity and health of women of childbearing age.” On Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law blog website, Lawrence O. Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute and university professor at Georgetown, and Alexandra Phelan, an adjunct professor in global health law and doctoral researcher with the O’Neill Institute, published an article Monday titled “The WHO Must Include Access to Birth Control and Abortion in its Temporary Recommendations for Zika-Associated Public Health Emergency of International Concern.” The Georgetown professors advocated for abortion and contraception several times in the article. “Georgetown University frequently turns a blind eye to dissent and immorality, but this is altogether a new degree of scandal,” said Cardinal Newman Society President Patrick Reilly, who pointed out Gostin’s public support for physician assisted suicide in Crisis Magazine several years ago. “These professors are lobbying for a death sentence against babies whose misfortune is to be borne by mothers infected by mosquito bites. Such cruelty has no place in a Catholic institution.”
UPDATE: A reader on Facebook helpfully points to this excellent overview on Zika from my old Patheos colleague Dr. Pia de Solenni. Among other things, she notes:
We do have other means to protect people from the Zika virus. To start, we have numerous governmental and non-governmental agencies that could start distributing mosquito netting and mosquito repellent. These are cheap supplies that can be readily made available. But governments could go further. Instead of eradicating the victim, namely the unborn child who may or may not have microcephaly, why not eradicate the mosquito in areas where it poses a grave threat to human life? The pesticide DDT could be used to do just that. In fact it was used to kill mosquitos and to wipe out malaria in many parts of the world. More on DDT can be found here, here, and here. Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelanhas one of the most succinct analyses I’ve come across. With regard to Zika, Dr. Robert Zubrin makes a pretty good case for the use of DDT. He brings out the stark contrast: mosquitos or babies?
Read it all. She makes powerful and compelling points.
Photo: Wikipedia
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