The Protection to Women’s Fundamental Rights Violated by the Zika Virus Epidemic

The article by Teixeira et al.¹ assumes a heroic tone describing the Brazilian response to the public health consequences of the Zika epidemic.

As the article demonstrates, the epidemic is concentrated among poor women from northeast Brazil, for whom there is no comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care available. Long-term contraceptive methods, which are culturally accepted by these women, are not offered by the public health system. Additionally, termination of pregnancy is illegal, and there is no novelty in the Brazilian social protection to include women and children affected by the epidemic.

I am leading a group who will demand that the Brazilian Supreme Court protect women’s fundamental rights violated by the epidemic. The right to terminate a pregnancy will be included in our demands, but the ethical reasons for our petition are largely different from the authors’ arguments: women have the right to decide to be freed of psychological torture imposed by the epidemic. It is not the fetus’s future impairments or the “extreme negative consequences for the families affected” that moves our demand, but the urgency to protect women’s rights in the epidemic.