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 But the 17-year-old is too scared to take a test to confirm if she
has Zika.
Like other women in the slums of Recife, which squat on stilts over
mosquito-ridden marshland in northeast Brazil, Maria has few options
if her child develops microcephaly, the condition marked by an
abnormally small head and underdeveloped brain that has been linked
to Zika.
Brazil has amongst the toughest abortion laws in the world and is
culturally conservative. Even if she wanted an illegal abortion and
could afford one, Maria is too heavily pregnant for a doctor to risk
it. So she prefers not to know.
"I'm too scared of finding out my baby will be sick," she told
Reuters, her belly poking out from beneath a yellow top.
The Zika outbreak has revived the debate about easing abortion laws
but Maria's case highlights a gap between campaigners and U.N.
officials calling for change and Brazil's poor, who are worst
affected by the mosquito-borne virus yet tend to be anti-abortion.
 Add a conservative Congress packed with Evangelical Christians
staunchly opposed to easing restrictions, plus the difficulty of
identifying microcephaly early enough to safely abort, and hopes for
change seem likely to be frustrated.
As with many countries in mostly Roman Catholic Latin America,
Brazil has outlawed abortion except in cases of rape, when the
mother's life is at risk or the child is too sick to survive.
An estimated 850,000 women in Brazil have illegal abortions every
year, many under dangerous conditions. They can face up to 3 years
in prison although in practice, jail terms are extremely rare.
With two-thirds of the population Catholic and support for
Evangelicals growing fast, polls show Brazilians oppose changing the
law. A survey by pollster VoxPopuli in 2010 showed that 82 percent
reject decriminalization, while a Datafolha poll the same year put
the figure at 72 percent.
Vandson Holanda, head of health for the Catholic Church in Brazil's
northeast, said there was no chance the Church would shift its
position on abortion because of Zika.
Suspected cases of microcephaly have topped more than 4,000 - with
more than 400 of those confirmed so far - since Zika was first
detected in April. Around one-third of the suspected cases are in
Pernambuco state around Recife.
The figures, which compare with around 150 cases across Brazil in a
normal year, show no signs of slowing.
While there is no scientific proof of a connection between Zika and
microcephaly, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the
outbreak a global emergency this month, citing a "strongly
suspected" link. The virus has spread to 26 countries in the
Americas since arriving in Brazil.
Women's rights groups in Brazil such as Anis plan to appeal to the
Supreme Court to relax Brazil's abortion laws. They hope to build on
a successful case in 2012 that legalized abortion for anencephaly,
where the fetus develops without a major part of its brain and
skull.
 Given the difficulty of identifying microcephaly before the final
weeks of pregnancy, Sinara Gumieri, a legal advisor to Anis, said
the group would petition the court to legalize abortion for women
diagnosed with Zika whose child was at risk of the condition, even
if it is not diagnosed in the fetus. She admitted it would be
difficult.
The doctors who led the anencephaly campaign in 2012 do not expect
its success to be repeated.
"It's completely different," said Eugenio Pita, a doctor in Recife
who performed legal abortions through the public health system for
20 years. "With anencephaly, the baby does not live; an abortion is
only speeding up the inevitable. Babies born with microcephaly
usually survive."
CONSERVATIVE CONGRESS TIGHTENING LAW
Legislative reforms seem even more unlikely. A 2014 election
returned a more conservative Congress, packed with Evangelicals, who
account for roughly a fifth of Brazil's 200 million people.
The speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, elected with the
backing of Evangelical congressmen, has proposed legislation to make
it harder to get an abortion in cases of alleged rape, sparking
protests across Brazil last year.
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Hundreds of Brazilian women die or are seriously injured each year
in botched illegal abortions involving improvised equipment --
mostly women not wealthy enough to travel abroad or pay for a proper
doctor.
"Illegal abortions bring with them serious risks, the complications
of which we have to pay careful attention to," said Jailson Correia,
Recife's health secretary, calling for a national debate on
liberalizing the law.
So far, there is inconclusive evidence that Zika has led to a rise
in abortions. The website Women on Web, an Amsterdam-based charity
that has offered to send free abortion pills to pregnant women
infected with Zika, said email requests from Brazil asking about the
service tripled last week.
The pills can be used to terminate pregnancy in the first 12 weeks.
But a for-profit online service, Aborto na Nuvem, said it reported
no change beyond a usual 15-20 percent monthly increase the site has
registered since it launched last year. Its co-founder, Heinrick
Per, said the service was mainly used by wealthy Brazilians and he
did not expect to see a rise because of Zika.
DETECTED LATE
With state-of-the-art equipment, experts say signs of microcephaly
may be detected from about 24 weeks but it is impossible to
determine how severe a case it might be. In Brazil, if identified
before birth at all, it is usually registered at 30 to 32 weeks, by
which time most doctors will not perform an illegal abortion.
"After 12 weeks it is hard to find a doctor to do an illegal
abortion in Brazil. After 24 weeks, it's impossible," said Dr Elias
Melo, a leading obstetrician at Hospital das Clinicas in Recife.
Though they are rarely prosecuted, doctors can face up to 10 years
in prison.
"It's not just a legal thing, it is cultural as well," Melo said,
noting that by 30 to 32 weeks you have a 2 kilogram (4.4 lb) baby
that could survive if removed from the womb.
Complicating matters, as many as 80 percent of people with Zika do
not show symptoms and there is no quick and reliable test for the
virus widely available.
As a result, some women may opt for preemptive abortions early in
pregnancy to avoid the risk of microcephaly, experts say.
French historian of science Ilana Löwy draws parallels with rubella
in Britain and France in the 1950s, when abortion was illegal yet
the number of terminated pregnancies rose dramatically.
Yet unlike with rubella, where up to 85 percent of fetuses infected
in early pregnancy develop defects, doctors so far have no proof
that Zika causes microcephaly, let alone an idea of its likelihood.
"Half of my 50 patients had Zika-like symptoms at some stage of
their pregnancy," said Melo. "Not one of them had a child born with
microcephaly."
Still, a dramatic rise in microcephaly cases could put a huge burden
on poor families and public health services already under strain.
At a hospital in Recife, Gabriela Falcao cradles her 2 month old
baby who was born with microcephaly and twisted legs as she waits to
see a doctor.
"If I could go back, I still wouldn't have an abortion," she said.
"I hold out hope my baby will grow to be like other kids."
(Additional reporting by Ueslei Marcelino; Editing by Daniel Flynn
and Kieran Murray)
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reserved.]
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