Brazil’s Catholic Church rejects Zika abortion; new cases reported in Australia, Tonga

BRASÍLIA ( AFP/ AP/ PNA/ Xinhua/) – The Catholic Church in Brazil on Wednesday rejected calls supported by the United Nations (UN) to allow abortion in cases of the birth defect microcephaly.

Abortion is restricted in Latin America’s biggest country to cases of rape, where the fetus has no brain, or where the mother’s life is in danger.

In Australia, health authorities have again urged pregnant women

not to undertake international travel after a pregnant woman in Queensland state became infected with the Zika virus, local media reported Thursday.

Tonga has recorded seven Zika cases that were confirmed by laboratory blood tests, local media reported Wednesday.

The UN human rights office has called on countries where the Zika virus is thought to be linked to a rash of microcephaly cases to relax laws and allow pregnant women with Zika to terminate.

But Auxiliary Bishop Leonardo Ulrich Steiner, secretary general of the Brazilian Bishops’ Conference, rejected the argument.

“Microcephaly has been occurring in Brazil for years. They are taking advantage of this moment to reintroduce the abortion topic,” he was quoted as saying in the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper.

“Abortion leads to eugenics, the practice of selecting perfect people,” he said.

Brazil has registered 404 confirmed cases of microcephaly, where the baby is born with an abnormally small head and brain, since October last year. Another 3,670 cases are not yet confirmed.

Scientists say that the Zika virus, carried by mosquitoes, appears to cause the condition in fetuses born to mothers who have been infected.

In Brazil, a group of activists is petitioning the Supreme Court for a change in the country’s restrictive abortion laws.

However, Brasilia’s archbishop, Sergio da Rocha, said society should “value life in whatever state it’s in.”

“Less quality of life doesn’t mean less right to live,” he said in the capital.

An estimated million illegal abortions are carried out each year in Brazil.

Australia

The woman, who was diagnosed on Tuesday after returning from an overseas trip, marks the third case of Zika virus to be confirmed in Queensland state this year after another woman and child were diagnosed last week, and the 13th since 2014, though no local transmission has occurred. Seven cases have been found in New South Wales state to the south.

For the virus to spread inside Australia however, it would need to be carried by the yellow fever mosquito driving the Zika virus in Brazil, where it’s been linked to thousands of birth defects in newborns, which is only found in the tropical regions of the far north of Queensland state. The mos- quito is not found in the metropolitan regions.

Tonga

Tonga has recorded seven Zika cases that were confirmed by laboratory blood tests, local media reported Wednesday.

Of the confirmed cases, two were confirmed in Tonga and five were reported from New Zealand in people who had traveled to Tonga and became sick when they returned to New Zealand, where they tested positive for Zika, said Dr. Reynold Ofanoa, Tonga’s chief medical officer for public health.

To date, there are 542 suspected Zika cases in the Pacific kingdom, according to Ofanoa.