Is Planned Parenthood Using This Crisis to Its Advantage?

It’s been widely understood that Planned Parenthood was advocating for abortions as a means to deal with the ramifications of the Zika virus.

But now, the abortionist organization seems to be using the international health crisis as an opportunity to fatten its pockets. As first reported by CNS News, a Planned Parenthood director, appearing at a panel discussion about Zika, said women who are pregnant and contract the virus should be able to terminate their pregnancies—killing their unborn babies—just on the potential they may be disabled by the virus.

Not only that, but killing those unborn babies is a “basic human right.”

“Zika has made a long-standing public health crisis impossible to ignore and demonstrates the critical need of government support for sexual and reproductive health care,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America director Chloe Cooney said. “The ability to decide if and when to have children is basic health care, but it’s a basic human right as well. And yet it’s not realized for so many women across the region, which this outbreak is making so crystal clear.”

Zika, a mosquito-borne virus, can result in microcephaly—an abnormally small head—in the children of women who contract the virus while pregnant. The New England Journal of Medicine released a report this week that it finds there is a strong link between early-gestation Zika infections of pregnant women and microcephaly in their babies.

It’s not an inherently fatal condition, but can result in developmental issues. According to the world-renown Mayo Clinic, the condition can be treated to provide enhanced development and improve quality of life:

Some children with microcephaly are of normal intelligence and development, even though their heads will always be small for their age and sex. But depending on the cause and severity of the microcephaly, complications may include:

- Developmental delays, such as in speech and movement
- Difficulties with coordination and balance
- Dwarfism or short stature
- Facial distortions
- Hyperactivity
- Mental retardation
- Seizures

Except for surgery for craniosynostosis, there’s generally no treatment that will enlarge your child’s head or reverse complications of microcephaly. Treatment focuses on ways to manage your child’s condition. Early childhood intervention programs that include speech, physical and occupational therapy may help your child strengthen abilities.

Your doctor might recommend medication for certain complications of microcephaly, such as seizures or hyperactivity.

Effectively, the parents of microcephaly patients are likely to experience many of the same difficulties faced by the parents of Down Syndrome children. But, advocating for selective abortions in situations where a child is likely to live a long life in spite of a health condition isn’t anything new for Planned Parenthood.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week that Zika has been linked to other congenital disorders, including premature birth and blindness, at later stages of the unborn child’s development. No independent studies have confirmed those findings, yet, but Cooney used the health crisis to rail against two states that have recently enacted legislation to defund her organization: Texas and Florida.

“Women with the least ability to plan their families—the least access to health care generally—will feel the impact of this outbreak the most,” she said. “And, in fact, if you look at the states that are already seeing the highest number of Zika cases—Florida and Texas—both are states that have recently slashed their reproductive health programs.

“Texas over a series of bills over the last several years, one of which is before the Supreme Court right now, and Florida just last month defunded Planned Parenthood. So this is the opposite of what we need to be doing as we’re gearing up as a nation to tackle this epidemic as it comes home.”

There haven’t been any cases of Zika that have originated in the U.S., although the mosquitoes that carry the virus have been found in 30 states. All 346 cases in the U.S. were “travel related,” with about a third of them located in Texas and Florida.

Cooney said women who lack financial resources, or “access to healthcare,” should be able to get elective abortions if they contract the Zika virus.