20 May Birth Control is Not Enough
The Philippines has long been a battleground for issues surrounding reproductive health. Women’s rights advocates have been fighting for decades to make birth control aids more available to the general population. A battle may have been won as birth control in the Philippines takes a step forward with the President’s statement that he supports the provision of birth control aids, such as condoms and pills, even to students.
In an article from Inquirer.Net (Duterte against abortion, but all for birth control – even for students), Leila B. Salaverria reports on President Rodrigo Duterte’s stance on the issues of birth control.
Duterte was quoted to have said, “You know, sex is instinct. The need, it’s instinct, you can’t stop it.” The President also mentioned that, “You cannot postpone your libido next week. How can you schedule your lust?”
However, it’s not all good news on the birth control front, because the President has also declared that he is against abortion.
Once again we’ve taken one step forward and two steps back.
The Philippine penal law on abortion is already one of the most restrictive in the world. Our laws penalize not only the woman who undergoes an abortion, but also the person assisting the woman.
To make matters worse, these laws are black and white. There are no exceptions for when the woman’s life or health is in danger, the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or if there is a case of fetal impairment.
The policy brief, “Access to Safe and Legal Abortion and Post-Abortion Care Can Save Filipino Women’s Lives,” provides some insight into the legal restrictions implemented in the Philippines:
While a liberal interpretation of the law would allow therapeutic abortion to save a woman’s life and other justifiable grounds such as rape, incest, and fetal impairment and although Philippine laws allow access to humane, nonjudgmental, compassionate post-abortion care, abortion is highly stigmatized.
In other words, a liberal interpretation of the law would allow for procedures that could end a pregnancy given special circumstances. However, these services are not available and are often demonized by many policymakers.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of Filipino women are placed at risk. The unavailability of safe and legal abortion procedures drives them to induce abortion in covert, underground locations that sometimes result in harm or death.
To simplify, our policymakers’ made abortion illegal in the Philippines, because they wanted to stop abortion from happening. However, their plan didn’t work. Women still had abortions.
By making abortion illegal and unavailable, all they achieved was risk the lives of these women.
In fact, according to The policy brief, “Access to Safe and Legal Abortion and Post-Abortion Care Can Save Filipino Women’s Lives“:
Unsafe abortion has long been recognized globally as one of the causes of maternal mortality and morbidity. In 2000, an estimated 12% of maternal deaths in the Philippines were due to unsafe abortion.