In this transnational study, we aimed at providing insights into women's views and attitudes towards their reproductive rights during the Zika epidemic. Women of distinct nationalities and ethnicities were recruited from various locations in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the United States. We conducted semistructured interviews that suggest that participants reproductive decisions were intimately related to personal convictions and cultural beliefs, and their actions and thoughts were embedded in their sociocultural norms. The majority of women interviewed communicated that it takes courage to make the extreme, emotional, and overwhelming decision to have an abortion. The findings of this study suggest that women from different countries and regions, and with different levels of social capital, faced the same conflicts concerning reproductive decisions. Thus, we argue for the importance of considering cultural beliefs and behaviors when implementing health prevention or protection measures to control epidemics. This epidemic may be yet another opportunity for the improvement of women's health by strengthening culturally sensitive family planning services, and a broad spectrum of public health interventions. Why was this study done?We aimed at providing insights into women's views and attitudes towards their reproductive rights, and at exposing the psychosocial and cultural factors affecting women during the times of Zika. We focused on the reproductive choices of women indirectly affected by the disease, because to our knowledge the literature on the Zika epidemic concentrates on the impact of the disease on women who delivered babies with microcephaly. What did the researches do and find?We interviewed women from various locations in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the United States and of distinct nationalities and ethnicities. They indicated that their reproductive decisions were intimately related to personal convictions and cultural beliefs, and their actions and thoughts were embedded in their sociocultural norms. The majority of women interviewed communicated that it takes courage to make the decision to have an abortion. What do these findings mean?The findings of this study suggest that women from different countries and regions, and with different levels of social capital, faced the same conflicts concerning reproductive decisions. Thus, we argue for the importance of considering cultural beliefs and behaviors when implementing health prevention or protection measures to control epidemics.

Introduction: COVID-19 requires governmental measures to protect healthcare system access for people. In this process, the collision of fundamental rights emerges as a crucial challenge for decision-making.Policy Options and Implications: This policy review analyzes selected articles by the PubMed searcher about extreme measures taken in several countries during precedent pandemics and the current pandemic, and selects hard decisions relating to the exceptional measures taken by judicial departments in Brazil, connecting them to the “collision of fundamental rights and law principles.” The collision of rights and principles imposed on decision makers a duty to provide balanced rights, and to adopt the enforcement of some rights prioritization. Ethical concerns were also verified in this field involving rights limitations. During a pandemic, the importance of extreme measures to protect health rights and healthcare systems is instrumental for focused, fast, and correct decision making to avoid loss of life and the collapse of healthcare systems. The main goals of this research are to discuss the implications and guidelines for public health decision making, the indispensable ethical and legal aspects for safeguarding health systems and the lives of people, and the respect of the Justice principle and of fundamental health and dignity rights. We conclude that COVID-19 justifies the prioritization of collective and individual health access rights. Acceptable standards of fundamental rights restrictions are established at the constitutional and international levels and must be enforced by rules and governmental action, to ensure fast and accurate decision making during a pandemic. Freedom rights exercises must be linked to solidarity for the realization of social welfare, for the health rights of all individuals and for health systems to function well during a pandemic.Actionable Recommendations: All individuals are free and equal, therefore social exclusion is prohibited. Institutions must consider social inequalities when discussing public health measures and be guided by ethical standards, by law principles, and rules recognized by constitutional and international law for the benefit of all during a health pandemic.Conclusions: Collective and individual health rights prevail over the collision of rights when facing pandemic occurrences, case by case, in health systems protection, based on the literature, on precedent pandemics and on legitimate Public Health efforts.

EDITORIAL AbstractThe term gender is defined as the social construction of sex, differentiating itself from the variable "sex" because this refers to the biological dimension of anatomical and physiological characterization of human beings, recognized as essential and innate in determining the distinctions between men and women. Gender violence is characterized as a phenomenon of multiple determinations that defines any act based on gender relations that results in physical and psychological harm or suffering. It refers to the hierarchy of power, desires of domination and annihilation of the other, and that can be used consciously sometimes in relationships as a mechanism for subordination of one person to the partner. Understanding how violence occurs from gender relations is essential in order for the phenomenon to be addressed. In this perspective, the Journal of Human Growth and Development has provided a wide debate on the subject, contributing to the decision making in regards to the fight against gender violence..

Zika virus infection during pregnancy is a cause of congenital brain abnormalities. Its consequences for pregnancies have made governments and both national and international agencies issue advice and recommendations to women. This study was designed to understand the impacts of Zika on women who were less directly affected and less vulnerable to Zika. Women were recruited from various locations in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the United States. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. Women perceived that public health systems placed an unfair responsibility for preventing health complications from Zika onto women who had limited ability to do so. They also stated that the measures recommended to them were invasive, while creating the perception that women were the sole determinant of whether they contracted Zika. The results indicate that women with higher levels of education understood the limitations of the information, government actions, and medical care they received, which ended up producing higher levels of anguish and worry. Gender inequality and discrimination must be recognized and rendered visible in the public health emergency response. The social effects of the epidemic affected women more than had been thought before and at deeper emotional levels.