President Benigno S. Aquino III signed Republic Act 10354, also known as the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012, is a bill that guarantees and enables measures for the sexual and reproductive rights of women, men, young people, and families by providing comprehensive and accessible reproductive health care services, including family planning.
Following the bill’s signing, it was immediately contested in court by numerous conservative parties, prompting the Supreme Court to issue a status quo ante injunction, preventing the Reproductive Health Law from taking effect.
The Supreme Court swept down several clauses in the Reproductive Health Law in its judgment last 2014. In non-emergency cases, health care practitioners will be authorized to withhold reproductive health treatments to individuals based on their personal or religious convictions. Minors seeking medical treatment who are pregnant or have experienced a miscarriage will need prior consent from their parents.
One Step Forward, One Step Back
For the nation's consumers and providers of reproductive health care and activists for reproductive health and rights, the adopted health care reform law seems like a tug of war.
Poverty is a multifaceted problem in the Philippines. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), as of the First Semester 2021, the proportion of impoverished Filipinos living below the poverty line was 23.7 percent, or 26.14 million Filipinos. Despite the church's strong arguments against the country's ever-growing population, the church criticizes the Reproductive Health law, pending in Congress for more than a decade.
As time passed, logical debates about family planning or women's reproductive rights were repeatedly lowered to philosophical, moral, and even existential debates about life and conception. One step forward, artificial family planning methods such as condoms were endlessly persecuted as sinful and classified as abortifacients, despite many scientific studies refuting such claims. One step back, "pro-life" organizations actively urged to use natural means, which some saw as time-consuming, impractical, and ineffective.
Rights and Lives
According to the Guttmacher Institute, the Filipino government's lengthy resistance towards modern contraception resulted in approximately 610,000 illegal abortions in 2012, with 1,000 women dying due to complications from unsafe abortion. Furthermore, the DOH HIV/AIDS and ART Registry of the Philippines (HARP) has 81,169 HIV and AIDS cases documented from January 1984 to October 2020.
The inadequate implementation of the Reproductive Health (RH) law is seen as more disruptive both economically and socially. For many Filipinos, this entails a higher poverty rate, more severe unemployment, and a frequent occurrence of hunger.
Poverty reduction is difficult to achieve only through macroeconomic growth. Microeconomics must be prioritized as well since more children are born from poor families than rich ones which perpetuate a cycle of poverty. Investing in reproductive health will enable the government more leeway to address the needs of the poor in the long run. Having access to family planning services, there is less of a detrimental effect on both the children and their parents’ lives.
Universal access to responsible parenthood services and reproductive health care are critical building stones for the Philippines' long-term growth and development. Its significance, particularly in assisting Filipino mothers to survive pregnancy and childbirth, providing partners and individuals with the tools to make informed family decisions, and contributing to the improvement of young people's sexual and reproductive health, the abolition of gender-based violence, and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, make the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 a relevant piece of legislation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written by: Shaira Mapoy
Layout and Design by: Dan Kurt Buenaventura
REFERENCES:
ALL ABOUT THE LAW - https://pcw.gov.ph/republic-act-10354/
POVERTY RATE 2021 - https://psa.gov.ph/content/proportion-poor-filipinos-registered-237-percent-first-semester-2021
CHURCH VIEW - https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/catholic-church-opposes-reproductive-health-bill-philippines
HOSTILITY RATE - https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-and-unsafe-abortion-philippines
Comentários