Jan Celine M.

Credo
IV-BEC

Philippine Reproductive Health Bill Continues to

Illegalize Abortion

By Dante Pastrana
22 February 2013

Republic Act Number 10354, or the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive

Health Act of 2012, formally came into effect in the Philippines last month. Key
provisions include mandating that the government provide public access to and
relevant information and education on medically safe, legal, ethical, affordable,
effective and quality reproductive health services, methods, devices and supplies.
It also mandates that the government provide sex education to public school
students from the ages of 10 to 19.
The new law passed after acrimonious debates in the Philippine Congress and the
wider political establishment. The Roman Catholic Church hierarchy mounted a
vitriolic opposition campaign, despite survey after survey indicating that 70 percent
of its own adherents supported public access to contraceptives and sex education
for youth.
President Benigno Aquino IIIs administration backed the legislation. At the end of
last year, Congress finally approved the law, over a decade after the first bills on
public access to contraceptives were first filed.
The bills main backers in Congress, the Bayan Munaaligned to the Stalinist
Communist Party of the Philippines (CCP), Akbayana breakaway from the CCP, and
petty-bourgeois reformers led by House Representative Edcel Lagman, are painting
the new law as a significant reform. This is far from the case.
The law is aimed not at improving the lot of the vast working poor. It continues to
criminalize abortion, does not provide free access to contraception, and allows
schools to opt out of sex education on religious grounds.
The RH bill institutes means testing, which limits its so-called universal access to
contraception to just 5 million households, who are identified by a government
database as poor. Section 3 of the new law states: The limited resources of the
country cannot be suffered to be spread so thinly to service a burgeoning
multitude.
The legislation has the backing of sections of the corporate elite. In 2011, according
to the Manila Bulletin, five large business groups, including the Makati Business Club
and the Philippine Chamber of Commerce Industry, issued a joint statement
demanding the Senate and the House of Representatives pass [it] into law without
further delay. Reproductive health and family planning, according to these business
representatives, was a direct strategy for poverty reduction and maternal and child
healthcare.
Big business has no real concern for the plight of the multi-millioned urban and rural
poor in the Philippines. For decades, the ruling elites have regarded a young and

rapidly expanding population as a crucial source of cheap labour. Amid the

deepening global economic crisis, however, business leaders are increasingly fearful
of the rising social tensions generated by the gulf between rich and poor.
Despite an official 2012 economic growth estimate of 6.6 percent, grinding poverty
continues to beset over 50 percent of Filipino families, and unemployment remains
at 11 percent, one of the highest rates in the Asia-Pacific region. Last year,
according to economist Benjamin Diokno, the October labor survey results show
that on a year-to-year basis, from October 2011 to October 2012, 882,000 jobs were
lost.
The Philippines, with more than 103 million people, has the 12th largest population
in the world. Metro Manila, the seat of government, ranks as the 5th largest city in
the world, with a population over 21 million. According to the National Statistics
Office (NSO), the country has the fastest growing population in Asiamore than a
million babies are born annually.
This population expansion is occurring in the grinding social conditions of a
backward capitalist economy. Workers and peasant farmers are brutally exploited.
Social services, including basic health services, are criminally inadequate. The
countrys doctor-to-population ratio, for instance, is 1 to 30,000 and is worsening,
while the World Health Organization minimum is 1 doctor for every 10,000 people.
According to the health department, an average of 15 mothers died in childbirth
every day in 2011, up from 11 in 2009.
NSO statistics indicates that 36 percent of births in the Philippines are unplanned.
Significantly, unplanned pregnancies are more likely to occur among older women
than younger women, with more than 84 percent of such unplanned births for
women ages 40-44 being unwanted.
Teen pregnancy in the country, the United Nations Family Planning Association
reported, is one of the highest in the Southeast Asian region. Seven out of 10
mothers are teenagers. In the Philippines, there are currently, at least, four million
mothers below the age of 19.
The Center of Reproductive Rights reported that an estimated 560,000 abortions
every year are being performed in back-alley clinics, resulting in 90,000 women
suffering abortion complications every year, and an estimated 1,000 dying, due to
the crude and painful methods used.
The Aquino administrations legislation will do little to ameliorate this social disaster.
In fact, the bill was enacted as the government is pressing ahead with the promarket agenda demanded by big business and foreign investors. The government is
reducing public debt by implementing regressive taxes and starving public
education and public hospitals of funds; as well as exacerbating the already dire
working and social conditions of Filipino workers through casualization and the
export of cheap labor.
As it imposes the burden of the economic crisis on working people, the Aquino
administration has resorted to various political diversions. Under the banner of
fighting corruption, Aquino has mounted a witch hunt against his unpopular
predecessor and political rival, Gloria Arroyo, and her supporters. Arroyo-appointed
Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona was impeached in early 2012 and

Arroyo herself was charged with sabotaging the 2004 presidential elections and
placed under house arrest in 2011.
The RH bill performs a similar political function. It has helped Aquino to posture as a
progressive and make a pitch via gender-based politics to better-off layers of the
middle class. In turn, the legislation provides some public money for the nongovernment and people organizations run by his backers among the Stalinists and
petty bourgeois liberals.
None of this does anything to address the terrible situation facing working class
women, who do not have the basic right to abortion and freely available
contraception, and are forced to rely on the countrys limited public health system,
even as it is being further starved of funds.

The senators who voted in favor of the RH Bill are:

1. Joker Arroyo
2. Alan Peter Cayetano
3. Pia Cayetano
4. Edgardo Angara
5. Francis Escudero
6. Miriam Defensor-Santiago
7. Ralph Recto
8. Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
9. Loren Legarda
10.
Teofisto Guingona II
11.
Franklin M. Drilon
12.
Francis Pangilinan
13.
Panfilo Lacson

The senators who voted against the RH bill are

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Juan Ponce Enrile (Senate President)

Bong Revilla
Vicente Sotto III
Antonio Trillanes IV
Aquilino Pimentel III
Jinggoy Estrada
Manuel Villar
Gregorio Honasan.

Philippines Reproductive Health Bill

Passes House of Representatives
Despite Aggressive Opposition from
Bishops
by Magdalena Lopez, Catholics for Choice
December 13, 2012 - 10:10 am

In the early morning of December 13th, 2012, the Philippines House of

Representatives voted to pass the Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive
Health and Population and Development Act of 2011 (commonly known as
the RH bill), which will give millions of women access to contraception and
other reproductive health services that were in many cases out of their
reach. Despite widespread support for the move, and the fact that almost a
third of Filipino women have an unmet need for contraception, the bill had
languished in Congress for almost 15 years.
It was a victory for those of us in the Philippines who want to save lives and
improve the well-being of families, an achievement that could not have come
about without pro-health champions in Congress and the advocates who
fought side-by-side for this bill with me and my colleagues for over a decade.
I applaud the legislators who stood up to the bishops and for the will of the
people, and the citizensboth Catholic and not Catholicwho refused to be
intimidated by the hierarchys no-holds-barred campaign against the bill.
The Catholic hierarchy has a lot to answer for in the delay, as Rina JimenezDavid, a journalist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, explained
in Conscience magazine in 2010. She described a call from two bishops
asking the president to slow down on the RH Billone among many, many
examples of the hierarchys aggressive lobbying. Whether its been a show of
force in the House of Representatives or pointed sermons against
reproductive health from the pulpit, the Catholic hierarchy has consistently
pressured the faithful in the pews and in Congress to sink this legislation. For
instance, Bishop Arturo Bastes of Romblon targeted House Minority Leader
Edcel Lagman,alleging that the lawmaker was excommunicating
himself with his support for the RH bill.

Just as consistently, however, opinion polls have shown a majority of citizens

and Catholics in the Philippines support the government making
contraception more available. And the facts have been on their side all
along.
We should remember that the result was also a defeatfor the bishops and
their myopic point of view. Their perspective tries to override individual
conscience and the rights of the women who have no access to
contraception that would allow them to decide whether or when to have
childrenwithout which their health and lives may be at risk.
Indeed, the Family Health Survey shows a precipitous rise in the number of
maternal deaths in the Philippines in recent years: from 162 per 100,000 live
births in 2006 to 221 per 100,000 live births in 2011. A Los Angeles
Times article described what life was like for Yolanda Naz, who lives with her
husband and eight children in a shack. Contraception was impossible to
afford after the local government of Manila, in collusion with the bishops,
stopped offering family planning services at public clinics.
For us, the banning of the pills was ugly, Naz said. A recent New York
Times article contained pictures of a maternity ward in Manila, two women to
a bed, that were hard to look at. Yet those who were against the RH bill had
the temerity to claim to speak for the poor.
The battle over the RH Bill was also fought among Catholic clergy. In a public
disagreement between two Catholic clergymen, Bishop Gabriel Reyes of the
Diocese of Antipolo took out a newspaper ad to refute a column in which Fr.
Joaquin Bernas, a Jesuit and dean emeritus of the Ateneo de Manila Law
School, portrayed family planning as a personal choice. Bernas disagreed
with the bishop that contraception is readily available to the poor. The
exercise of freedom is only possible if one has the capacity to choose, said
the priest.
The bishops showed up in full force to the vote today, and no doubt they
were focusing on the thoughts of the lawmakers before them, hoping that all
their press statements and pressure tactics had sunk in. They may have, but
they did not sway the 113 members who voted for the Bill. Pro-RH politicians
like Rep. Kimi Cojuangco cited public health in voting yes.
Im a woman of means, then I lived with the poor and saw women suffering.
I do this for the women, she said. I am a Catholic. The poor demand this

national policy be adopted. I am mandated to listen to our people, said Rep.

Rodolfo Biazon after his vote today.
When youve pledged to cover up the truth, being forced into the light can be
frightening, but I can assure the bishops of the Philippines: none of the
doomsday scenarios you depicted will come to pass. In reality, the passage
of the RH bill means that the Philippines will be much the sameexcept
healthier and safer for women and their families.
While far from perfect, the Reproductive Health Bill addresses some of the
health disparitiesincluding maternal mortality disproportionately
affecting the poorest women, and may help check the rising HIV infection
rate in a country where condoms are too expensive for many people. I
heartily applaud those who voted in favor of its passage.
The Senate is due to vote on an RH measure as early as next week.

The Reproductive Health bills, or popularly known as RH bill,

are Philippine Bills aiming to guarantee universal access to methods and
information on birth control and maternal care. It is a way of helping people to be
more advance, well prepared, and to widen up each and every individuals mind
setting about our society nowadays.
There is this top agreement about its provisions on maternal and child health care,
there is great debate on its proposal that we taxpayer and the private sector will
fund and undertake widespread distribution of family planning devices such as birth
control pills (BCPs) and IUDs, and as the government continue campaigning to
broadcast a good information and effect on its use through health care centers
nationwide.
Everyone has been talking about this RH bill, for some agreed and some dont. I
could say that in some part of each individual, RH bills may help and it may bring
into some point also that it may trigger to do such thing that will ruin someones
life. But as the saying goes that every little thing that is too much is not good. So, it
depends on how were going to take it and treat it as long as we are only motivated
to do well and focus only to what could bring us a healthy and happy life then I think
it will help.
he Reproductive Health Bill is a bill pending in the 15th Philippine Congress that
seeks to promote on a national level access to information and the availability of
natural and artificial contraception. It seeks to empower couples in responsible
family planning through education and access to legal and medically safe birth
control.
The bill was first filed during the 8th congress in the Corazon Aquino administration
and has been refilled in succeeding sessions. It has had an uphill battle due to
extreme opposition mainly from the Roman Catholic Church, Pro-Life Philippines, the
National Coalition for Family and Life, Abay Pamilya, and Philippine Nurses
Association.
Click to read the House of Representatives and Senate versions of the bill.
Despite the strong opposition by the Catholic church, who believes that the said bill
will destroy family lives, the Chambers of Congress passed on the third and final
reading of the RH Bill on 17 December 2012 13 senators and
133 Congressmen voted in favor of the bill, which will provide the government funds
for contraceptives and reproductive health classes in schools.
Senators Edgardo Angara, Joker Arroyo, Alan Peter Cayetano, Pia Cayetano, Miriam
Defensor-Santiago, Franklin Drilon, Francis Escudero, Teofisto Guingona III, Panfilo
Lacson, Loren Legarda, Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.., Francis Pangilinan and Ralph
Recto voted in favor of the bill. Against the bill are Senate President Juan Ponce
Enrile, Senate Pro Tempore Jose Jinggoy Estrada, Majority Leader Vicente Tito

Sotto III, Senators Gringo Honasan, Aquilino Pimentel III, Manuel Manny
Villar, Bong Revilla, and Antonio Trillanes IV.
President Benigno Simeon Aquino III has certified the RH bill as urgent. It was
languished at the Congress for 10 years, as legislators avoided to upset bishops that
were instrumental in the 1986 People Power revolt.
A pastoral letter was issued by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP), urging the other 64 lawmakers who have not yet cast their votes
to vote against it. CBCP vice president Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates
Villegas said that the bill will lead to more crimes against women and that it
corrupts the soul.