The Batty World Health Organization Moves From Defending China to Championing an Essential Service: Abortion

Health officials inspect bats to be confiscated and culled in the wake of coronavirus outbreak at a live animal market in Solo, Central Java, Indonesia, Saturday, March 14, 2020. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. (AP Photo)

The World Health Organization’s occupied an interesting place in the news lately.

As an example, not long ago, WHO Executive Director Dr. Michael Ryan had this to say about bat-happy China and its reporting of the coronavirus:

“I think we need to be very careful…not to be profiling certain parts of the world as being uncooperative and non-transparent. We need to be balanced in that. And we need to recognize that systems under pressure find it hard to share everything on a minute-to-minute basis.”

As I covered previously, Lindsey Graham responded notably:

“That’s ridiculous when it comes to China. They have a pattern of withholding information from their own citizens. … No, they underreported this. And China has a bad history.”

It doesn’t sound wrong..

Well, now WHO’s going to…bat for something different: abortion.

As reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the organization released a statement Sunday about the world’s essential needs:

“Services related to reproductive health are considered to be part of essential services during the COVID-19 outbreak.”

So…pregnancy care? Yep. Childbirth? You betcha.

But wait — there’s more:

“This includes contraception, quality health care during and after pregnancy and childbirth, and safe abortion to the full extent of the law.”

Per The Daily Caller, the group also noted “that the WHO provides both global technology and policy guidance to WHO members ‘on the use of contraception to prevent unintended pregnancy, safe abortion, and treatment of complications from unsafe abortion.’”

According to the health bunch, abortion must also be provided by clinical staff to those with the virus:

“Women’s choices and rights to sexual and reproductive health care should be respected, irrespective of whether or not she has a suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection.”

While they were at it, I guess WHO figured it might as well go ahead and tell everyone they have to implement some socialism, too:

“Sexual and reproductive health care is integral to universal health coverage and achieving the right to health.”

As observed by The Daily Wire, WHO might wanna focus on some other things presently:

On Monday, members of Congress, including Arizona Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ) demanded that the United States investigate the World Health Organization and its ties to the Chinese government — and, particularly, why the WHO took Chinese information about the virus at face value, even as death rates inside China began to climb.

Well if that ain’t a mess…

As of late, the World Health Organization doesn’t seem to be very good at…world health.

We might wanna hold off on listening to WHO about much:

Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳. pic.twitter.com/Fnl5P877VG

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2020