RH bill will keep abortion a crime: senator
Thursday, August 18, 2011
THE Reproductive Health (RH) bill will keep abortion a crime and will prevent unplanned pregnancies, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago said Wednesday in the last installment of her three-part sponsorship speech of the measure.
She said that with the family planning options offered by the RH bill, “pregnancy will result in a wanted child, not an unwanted child that the mother might be forced to abort.”
Citing a 2006 study by the Guttmacher Institute and the UP Population Institute, she said a third of all unwanted pregnancies end in abortions. The same study estimated that there had been 473,400 abortions in the Philippines by 2004. By 2008, there had been 570,000 abortions, she said, citing a separate Guttmacher Institute study.
That year, 90,000 women ended up in the hospital for complications after the abortion. She said nine of every 10 women who have abortions are married, and 87 percent of them are Catholics.
“Under the Penal Code, abortion is a crime, and it will remain a crime under the RH bill,” she stressed.
Critics of the bill have said it legalizes abortion although none of the versions of the bill now in Congress amend the Revised Penal Code.
Critics of the bill have also said that contraceptives can induce abortions. The Senate even held a hearing in May to find out which forms of contraception are abortifacient.
But Santiago said the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and the United Nations came out with a position paper in 2006. The WHO said that combined hormone pills and patches, progestin-only methods like Depo Provera, intrauterine devices, implants, and emergency contraception pills are not abortifacient.
“None of these methods have been shown to cause the abortion of an implanted fetus. Therefore they cannot be labeled as abortifacients,” Santiago said, citing the WHO paper.
She said the lack of access to contraception has kept the poor down and the rate of maternal deaths up.
“The bigger the family, the poorer. The bigger the family, the less educated the children. The poor know this, and prefer smaller families, but they are unable to keep the family small,” she said.
She also poked a hole in another argument against the bill: that the Philippines needs a large population as a source of labor.
“This is fallacious, because the issue is not how big the labor supply is, but how skilled the labor supply is,” she said.
Citing the UP Population Institute, Santiago said a large labor pool may not have the skills needed by the jobs market, or may be too large for that market to absorb them.
Constitution, international law back RH bill
Santiago, whose previously talked on Canon law in support of the RH bill, said the Constitution and international treaties that the Philippines is party to support passage of the bill.
“The right to privacy applies to sex, marriage, and procreation,” she said.
The senator added that the RH bill, which will give Filipinos information on safe sex and family planning, upholds the right to information. Keeping information on contraception away from the poor will also deprive them of their right to equal protection since that would deprive poor mothers of their right to protect themselves and their children.
She added that since the 1987 Constitution does not prohibit passage of the RH bill, the Senate can enact it and let the Supreme Court decide on its constitutionality.
“If we pass the RH bill, it will enjoy a presumption of constitutionality if it is questioned in the Supreme Court,” she said.
Santiago added the Philippines is party to international treaties, including the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw), to give women control over their own fertility. The Philippines has also committed to “family planning universally available by 2015 or sooner.”
“To debate this commitment at this time is too late and pointless,” she said.
At least two senators — Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III — have expressed opposition to the bill.
Sotto said the lobby for the RH bill may be part of a “population control” agenda and that funding for reproductive health may be lost to corruption.
“We will give every proposal a fair hearing. This is our position. But as far as voting, for or against, it’s a matter of conscience,” Enrile said Tuesday after President Benigno Aquino III said the RH bill would be a priority measure. (Jonathan de Santos/Sunnex)
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