28 Sep September 28 International Safe Abortion Day 2022 PINSAN Statement
Over 90 million women live in countries where abortions are prohibited. There are 55 million women in the Philippines where access to induced abortion is restricted and stigmatized as a crime. While many countries have eased restrictions on abortion, decriminalized it altogether, or made it legal and accessible, the Philippines remains stringent, severe, and backward in its views on abortion, leaving our 55 million women potentially vulnerable.
The 28th of September is globally recognized as the International Safe Abortion Day. While the Philippines joins this global movement, the fight of Filipino women is a continuous daily struggle. We at PINSAN strongly campaign to put an end to this unnecessary suffering of women and girls, especially the most marginalized.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. once expressed support for the decriminalization of abortion for extreme instances like rape and incest. While this is welcomed, it remains a myopic view on abortion, and one that sees that women should first be abused before they are able to access safe abortion services, and that considers abortion only as an emergency procedure, and not a fundamental healthcare right.
As the highest ranking public servant in the country, the President must lead the way in decriminalizing abortion in the Philippines. We at the Philippine Safe Abortion Advocacy Network (PINSAN) urge President Marcos Jr. to support the decriminalization of abortion as a means to save the lives of thousands of women. The restrictive abortion law forces women to undergo unsafe abortion methods and delay healthcare or outrightly not seek care. Often, women suffering post-abortion complications are refused life-saving care or they are subjected to inhumane treatment. In 2015–2019, Guttmacher reported over half of all pregnancies were unintended and over half of these unintended pregnancies ended in abortion. In a 2012 study, the Guttmacher Institute found that about 1,000 women die annually in the Philippines due to unsafe abortions.
For all our public officials as well, one of the many duties of the country’s legislators is to protect the rights and welfare of the people they serve. As such, it is in the people’s best interest that our lawmakers champion the Decriminalization of Induced Abortion to Save the Lives of Women, Girls, and Persons of Diverse Gender Identities Bill and its passage into law to immediately aid the millions of women the country continues to neglect.
The struggle for women’s healthcare rights, however, does not begin and end with decriminalizing abortion. The need for induced abortions partly stems from the glaring lack of proper sexuality education, access to contraception, including emergency contraception, access to affordable, if not free, SRH services, unequal gender relations and prevalence of gender-based violence. These are causes fully supported by PINSAN alongside the broader call to urgently decriminalize abortion.
Lastly, we at PINSAN believe that to have access to safe and legal abortion, we must not only decriminalize it, but also destigmatize it. Many people still hold a very negative perception of abortion, all the more reinforced by draconian legislation. As advocates, it is our duty to help educate the people around us. We can help by sharing resources such as articles, infographics, and videos, as well as sharing women’s stories on their arduous process of undergoing unsafe abortion in the Philippines.
Hence, this September 28, PINSAN is calling on those who believe that healthcare is not a privilege afforded to some, but is a universal right that must be recognized and respected, to support the cause to decriminalize abortion. We also call on our legislators to adopt not just a more progressive slant, but also a more proactive approach in lawmaking, one that recognizes that the penal law on abortion in the country contributes to preventable, unnecessary deaths.
We at PINSAN continue the fight started by many women before us, until the 55 million women in the Philippines and other women all over the world need not fight for reproductive rights and healthcare any more.
#SaveWomensLives
#DecriminalizeAbortionNow